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BEEAKFAST IN BED; 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 

^ Series of |nbi5;*8tiJ)lc ^immxsts, 
BY GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA, 

AUTHOB OF "twice KOUND THE CLOCK," " WILLIAM HOGARTH," " THK SEVEN 

SONS OP MAMMON," "THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OP CAPTAIN 

DANGEROUS," ETC., ETC., ETC. 



BOSTON : 
JAMES RBDPATH, Publisher, 

221 Washington Steeet. 
18 63. 



r 



TO 

MY KIND DOCTOR 

H. J. J. 

WHO SET ME ON MY LEGS 

AND 
WOULD TAKE NO FEE, 

WKITTEN IN SICKNESS BUT EEVISED IN HEALTH^ 



Guilford Street, Russell Squai-e, 
SepUmber^ 1B63. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 
ON A REMARKABLE DRAMATIC PERFORMANCE . . 1 

ON A LITTLE BOY GOING TO SCHOOL . . .33 

ON MR. mayor's spelling-book . . . .50 

ON THE prevailing MADNESS • . , .69 

ON THINGS GOING, GOING — GONE I . . . .81 

ON BEING BURNT ALIVE 104 

ON THE CONDITION OF MY POOR FEET . . . 130 

ON A REMARKABLE DOG 154 

ON WHAT PEOPLE SHOULD HAVE FOR BREAKFAST . 184 
ON HAVING SEEN A GHOST AT HOXTON, AND THE VERY 

DEUCE HIMSELF IN PARIS .... 204 

ON THE DISCOVERY IN ONE's WAISTCOAT-POCKET OF 

SOME BONES OF UNUSUAL CHARACTER . . 229 

ON A YOUNG LADY IN A BALCONY . . . 254 



BKEAKFAST EST BED 

OR, 

PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 



O]^ A REMARKABLE DRAMATIC PER- 
EORMANCE. 

Do yon know Hircins and Spnngins, servants 
to Dorothea, in that cnrious old play by Mass- 
inger, the Virgin Martyr f I have always looked 
npon these two fellows as the perfection of 
scoundrelism. To steal pence off the tray of ^ 
blind man's dog is ordinarily esteemed the acme 
of baseness ; but Hircins and Spnngins go far 
beyond this. They take the saintly Virgin's 
wages, but they are bond-servants to Yenus; — 
La Venere de! ruffiani^ and to Bacchus (Bacchus 
who is head warden of Yintners' Hall, ale Conner, 
mayor of all victualling houses ; lanceprezade to 
red noses and invincible Adalantado over the 
armada of deep-scarleted, rubified, and carbun- 
cled faces). How they drink and gorge, and 



8 BEEAKFAST m BED ; OEj 

swear and lie^ and bear false witness ! When 
Dorothea sends tliem out with meat and medi- 
cines to comfort her ahnswomen, Hircius and 
Spnngius convey the cates to a receiver of stolen 
goods, and spend the proceeds in foul riot. 
"For blood of grapes they sell the widow's 
food," and " snatch the meat out of the prison- 
er's mouth " to fatten the naughty. "With vile 
hypocrisy they simulate devotion ; but when the 
meek Angelo, who is always walking about with 
upturned eyes and a lighted taper, has gone on his 
way, Hircius and Spungius thrust their tongues 
into their cheeks, and reel into the nearest tav- 
ern, blaspheming.- Finally, v/hen Dorothea, 
their mistress, their benefactress, their Saint, is 
to be scourged, outraged, tortured, who but Hir- 
cius and Spungius are there to help the hang- 
man ? Faugh ! There is but one merry passage 
in this mournful tragedy, and that is where the 
twin villains are dragged away by the heels to 
the gallows. 

Every man who feels strongly, and works 
hard, and has made a name, and hates Rogues, 
is pestered with a Hircius and a Spungius. They 
begin by fawning upon and slavering him ; and 
when they discover that he will have none of 
their lip-service, they become his enemies. With 
one more ally, they would be counterparts of the 
three Jews who put their three-hatted heads 



^ 



i>HILOSOPHT BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 9 

together to "devise devices against Jeremiah, 
and make Ms life a torment to him." Ever 
since I laid down pencil to take np pen, I have 
had my Hircius and my Spungius for ever carp- 
ing, sneering, maligning, reviling. Hircius 
Hbels me in the " Cad's Chronicle " because I have 
declined to lend him three-and-sixpence ; Spun- 
gius, who is reviewer-in-ordinary to the " Gutter- 
blood Gazette," essays to filch from me my good 
name because I would not insert his "ISTew Scan- 
dal about Queen Elizabeth " in " Temple Bar." 
Yet I honestly confess that the enmity of Hir- 
cius and Spungius does me good. It is better, 
O sage, to wriggle on a cushion stuffed full of 
the thorns of abuse than to rest the head on. the 
hop-pillow of flattery. A mongrel cur barking 
at your heels is not so agreeable, but he is more 
useful than a cringing Boswell. Then, again, is 
there not a pleasure in taking one's traducers by 
the ear, and cudgelling their bewrayed hides 
with sounding thwacks ? To hear Hircius howl, 
to listen to Spungius as he squeals— this is sack 
and sugar to one who is content to abide by the 
wholesome doctrine of give and take, and who, 
in return for a craven blow, can deliver the 
" auctioneer " well over the face and eyes. 

"Aha!" I hear Hircius and Spungius cry 
when they open this sheet, and see " Breakfast 
in Bed" at the head of the page. "IS'ow we 
1* 



10 



have him on the hip. I^ow we will gird at him, 
and** snarl, and glose, and ' make his life a tor- 
ment to him.' '' Yes, H. and S., so shall you do 
till you swell and burst with venom, if you like 
the sport. " Oho !" Hircius and Spungius con- 
tinue, "Breakfast in Bed, forsooth! Here is 
another sample of literary vanity. His lordship 
breakfasts in bed, does he, and not at the penny 
coifee-shop ? What does he condescend to take 
at his breakfast ? Chocolate frothed in a silver 
mill ? devilled kidneys, muflfins, flowery pekoe, 
truffled turkey, or Strasburg pie ? Does he read 
the ' Morning Post V " (Yes, he does ; and a 
capital paper it is, with columns inexorably 
closed against Hircian and Spungian contribu- 
tions.) " Does he subsequently rise, don a bro- 
caded dressing-gown, and, with a golden pen, on 
violet-tinted paper, set down the thoughts that 
have flitted through his mind at breakfast-time ? 
Or, does his Ineff'ability (and be hanged to his 
impudence !) have a rosewood writing-desk inlaid 
with ivory (Mechi and Bazin, makers) brouglit 
to his bedside, and deposited on his pink silk 
quilted counterpane, while a trembling slave 
holds the standish ? Or, perhaps, we shall be 
favored with a description of the bedchamber on 
the model — he is an inveterate plagiarist — of 
Xavier de Maistre's Voyage autour de ma Cham- 
ire. I^ow for a broker's inventory of the furni- 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 11 

ture : chairs, wasliliand-stand, tiger-skin rug, and 
adjoining batt-room. Oh, be joyful; let ns say 
grace, my brother, for anon we shall be full of 
meat. The old, old Galimatias is coming. The 
old conceit, ignorance, fragments of slangy 
French, scraps of bad Latin, wiredrawn descrip- 
tions, interminable digressions, and affected ver- 
biage. And this wretched imitation of the 
immortal ^ Eoundabout Papers ' he calls ^ Break- 
fast in Bed.' Breakfast in bed, quotha ! Why 
not Breakfast on a doorstep. Breakfast in the 
workhouse, Breakfast in gaol ?" 

"Well, all may be on the cards ; for the life of 
mortal man is full of strange vicissitudes. Mean- 
while I am coitent to Breakfast in Bed. Do 
You, my reader, want a reason for a decidedly 
indolent and perhaps unhealthy habit? You 
should have a hundred, were you so minded. I 
breakfast in bed because I like it ; because I am 
much given to sitting up all night, with cats, 
and owls, and friends, and books, and things; 
because I am generally very tired when I go to 
bed, and my poor feet require rest as well as my 
poor head ; because a cup of tea taken between 
the sheets tastes more sweetly to me than the 
family souchong on the ground-floor ; because I 
am much given to quarrelling with my bread- 
and-butter at breakfast-time — and, alone, in bed 
there are but two parties to the quarrel instead 



12 BEEAKFAST INT BED ; OE, 

of three or four; becanse there is a bell close to 
my band, wbich I can pull viciously when I 
choose ; because one can get through the perusal 
of six daily papers much better in bed than in 
an arm-chair ; and finally, because when in bed 
in the fresh morning, and wide awake, not in 
the incoherence of drowsiness, one can think, 
plot, devise, arrange, decide upon the moment- 
ous Yea, the irrevocable No ; bid farewell to the 
evil, welcome the good and rise a new man. 

iN'ever mind what my sleeping apartment is 
like. Damask-hung four-poster, ceiled with, 
plate-glass ; feather-bed and down pillow, or 
iron pallet, with straw paillasse and hard- 
stuffed bolster — ^what does it matjpr ? I ask not 
•Hircius and Spongius to what twopenny-rope 
their hammocks are hung pending the final sus. 
per coll. How many pairs of boots are there in 
the dressing-room ? Do I urticate my back hair 
with two brushes (ivory-backed) 2 Have I any 
Ess. Bouquet, Eondeletia, or Toilet Vinegar on 
the dressing-table ? All these are things of little 
moment. Suffice it to say that the windows are 
open from the top, that there is no looking-glass 
in the room — for this reason, that most men 
have an invincible propensity for looking at their 
tongue the first thing in the morning, and when 
you look at your tongue you can't help looking 
at your face ; and then cornea the cold shudder 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 13 

when yon discoyer that yon are a night older, 
and that gray hair nnmber nineteen has jnst pnt 
in an appearance. Stay, there is one other cir- 
cnmstance which I may mention in connection 
with my domestic arrangements. On the wall 
opposite my bed hangs, neatly framed, an old 
Dutch Engraving of the martyrdom of some five 
hundred saints, who suffered in the persecutions 
of the Roman Emperors from Yalerian to Max- 
entius. There they are, being fried, grilled, 
boiled, roasted, barbecued, flayed alive, burnt, 
steamed, whipped, pinched, hanged, decapitated, 
baked, drowned, minced, scolloped, hewn in 
pieces, sawn asunder, impaled, broken on the 
wheel, and flung to wild beasts. A lively com- 
position, with a long epigraph in Dutch, begin- 
ning '' Set Martelen der hloedgetuigen de onder 
der Yervolging der Soomse Keisers voer de 
Waarheid des Evangeliiims^\ and so forth ! I 
like to look at this sanguinolent old print, first, 
in complacency for being in bed, in Bloomsbury, 
in the Queen's peace, with the breakfast things 
coming jangling npstairs on the tray — Ha ! " 
another breakage at that unlucky second-pair 
landing; next, in gratitude remembering that 
the five hundred persons here represented were 
cruelly done to death because they presumed to 
differ in matters of conscience from the " Eoomse 
Keisers ;" and, thank God ! no King or Kaiser 



14 BREAKFAST IN BED ; OR, 

nowadays dare so much as pinch an English- 
man's little finger for what he writes or speaks 
according to his conscience. 

Cannot one get up a little Philosophy between 
the Sheets this fine rainy morning? Here are 
the ]!^ewspapers. Surely some texts must turn 
up in those extensive, close-printed, loose-medi- 
tated columns. In the advertisements always 
there is a mine of philosophy ; but they always 
detain the " Times " Supplement down-stairs — I 
presume with a hankering after the Births, Mar- 
riages, and Deaths, the abandoned Initials who 
have run away from home, and the Bank an- 
nouncements of unclaimed stock. There is none 
standing in my name, I am sure. Here are the 
telegrams — Eeuter's hottest ? The Tuileries com- 
pliment Turin. Do they ? The Reichsrath ? ]^o ; 
it's the Landtag. Stay, it's the council of the 
nobility of the government of Tamboff, who 
have been memorializing somebody about some- 
thing. Indeed! Montenegro. "Where is Mon- 
tenegro ? There is no use in consulting the map ; 
for has not a great authority informed us that all 
maps professing to give a projection of any places 
out of the British Dominions are simply impos- 
tures? The Turks have taken Spuz, and are 
marching on Cettigne. Much good may it do 
them ! Another dreadful murder. There is 
always another dreadful murder. Infanticide. 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS 15 

Ditto. Swindling extraordinary; more garotte 
robberies ; death through crinoline ; Lord John 
Manners on agricultural prizes ; Mr. Henley on 
laborers' cottages; Mr. Disraeli on himself; 
" consols opened heavily " — did they ? state of 
trade ; suicide ; destitution ; another awful fire. 
Well, I do not see that the world has altered 
its ordinary jog-trot since yesterday, — since 
2,190,000 yesterdays, more or less. "We are still 
laboring, groaning, crashing in M. Victor Hugo's 
dark tunnel ; and I for one am choked with the 
engine's ever-belching smoke, and deafened by 
the rattle and roar ; and they don't give us lights 
in the second-class carriages ; and thrusting my 
head out of the window, at the risk of having it 
(the head) knocked off, I can see no glimmer of 
the luminous point which is so visible to M. 
Hugo's eagle eye — the happy valley ; the pro- 
mised land ; the bright terminus — Canaan. 

Here are leading articles galore. "It was 
once wittily remarked by Kochefoucault " — 
Connu. " The Fabian policy of General McClel- 
lan," — ^I have seen that before. " Those whom 
the gods are resolved to destroy they first deprive 
of reason ; and the conduct of the Indian govern- 
ment with reference to the Gwalior bungalows, 
the farming of mofussils to Kansamahs, and the 
breach of Sudder Adawlut towards, the ryots of 
the Himalayan compounds" — ^Yery clever and ex- 



16 BREAKFAST IK BED ; OR5 

haustive, I have no doubt ; but my acquaintance 
"vvitli Hindostan stops at curried lobster, and In- 
dian politics are to me among tbe cosas de 
Edjyana. 

I j ust glance at the theatrical advertisements 
above the leaders. My eye lights on the un- 
varying staple of the bill of fare at the Haymar- 
ket. Out American Cousin^ of course. Tre- 
mendous and continued success of Mr. Sothem 
as Lord Dundreary. Why, let me collect my 
thoughts. Where v^as I last night ? whom did I 
meet ? with whom did I quarrel ? which are sy- 
nonymous terms. Why, I went to the Theatre 
Royal Haymarket, and paid for my admission — 
at least, somebody else paid for me, the free list 
being suspended, and orders hopelessly unattain- 
able; and I saw Mr. Sothem in Lord Dun- 
dreary^ and I have seen him twice within as 
many v/eeks. 

I don t often go to the play. It is too good 
for the likes of me. I envy the people who seem 
to enjoy the performance, which wearies and stu- 
pifies me. I am restless and uneasy ; long for 
the green curtain to descend, and for the festoons 
of brown hoUand to envelope the boxes. I never 
sat out a theatrical performance without wishing, 
not that the roof might fall in, and the chande- 
lier tumble into the pit — ^for those accidents 
would hurt my brethren below — but that the 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 17 

stage-manager would step forward and inform 
the audience that the French had landed, or that 
a blue monkey was standing on his head on the 
summit of Bow-church steeple, or that Captain 
Fowke's brick barn at South Kensington had 
caught fire : anything sensational, in fact, to put 
a stop to the mummery on the stage and clear 
the house. I had not, before I went to see Lord 
Dundreary^ been inside the Haymarket theatre 
for years. I remember the last time well ; the 
pit black with paying play-goers' heads, the 
boxes radiant with famous men and fair women, 
and one old man on the stage, white-bearded, 
straw-bedecked, babbling to his Fool about his 
daughter's ingratitude. Y'ldi tantmn. I have 
seen William Charles Macready in King Lear / 
and after that wondrous impersonation, the rant 
and bufibonery of the modern stage disgust a 
dull man somewhat. Exult not, my Hircius and 
Spungius ; I am not about to descant on the 
glorious old days of the drama — on Young and 
Charles Kemble, whom I have seen — on the 
Kean, whom I never saw — on "Jack Bannister, 
sir,^' who died years before I was born. 

And let me tell Mr. John Baldwin Buckstone, 
whom I have known, admired, and respected for 
very many years — who has been, I am proud to 
say, from the first, a subscriber to this Magazine, 
that he is very much mistaken if he thinks I am 



18 BREAKFAST ET BED ; OE, 

about to puff either Mr. Sothem or himself. ^"0, 
J. B. B.5 perpend. Ton may cut off with ruthless 
excision yonr subscription to T. B,^ but you shall 
listen to the impartial critic now Breakfasting in 
Bed. You may strike, but you shall hear. 

Some kind, despotic friends I am happy to 
possess were good enough, lately, to take me to 
the Exhibition (where I had never been, of my 
own motion, since the opening day) and to feed 
me on macaroni dressed in the llTeapolitan fash- 
ion, with tomatoes, and to give me some grouse, 
and some selzer and sillery, and other nice things, 
which cast a sunshine on the shady walks of life, 
and to tell me that three front seats had been 
secured a week before at the Haymarket, and 
that I was to go, en sandwich^ and see Lord 
Dundreary. I protested; but in vain. I pleaded 
my engagements, the printer's devil of T. JB.^ my 
incapacity to appreciate the drama, my aching 
head, and those perennial poor feet. All remon- 
strances I found unavailing; and ten minutes 
before the termination of a very stupid farce, I 
found myself in the first agonies of that cramp 
which is the lot of all who occupy front rows at 
an English theatre. 

It is not, I conceive, necessary that I should 
describe the plot and incidents of the piece, en- 
titled Our American Coiisin^ and which is called 
a Comedy. This much, however, I may say, that 



PHILOSOPHT BETWEBH THE SHEETS. 19 

it is, as regards constniction, dialogne and in- 
triguGj about as much a comedy as I am a Dutcli- 
man. As comedies go, however, I suppose that 
it is received as something ^uite in the style of 
Sheridan or Mrs. Inchbald. There is plenty of 
'' broad fun " in it, which may be said to be ana- 
logous with " Broad church," i. ^., no fun at all 
Is it funny for the " tag " to the first act to de- 
pend on a Yankee pulling the string of a shower- 
bath, and bellowing beneath the cascade ; or for 
the wind-up of the second to turn on the popping 
of a champagne-cork and the casting of an eifer- 
vescing jet over Lord Dundreary? These fun- 
niments remind one of the old "real water" 
effects of Sadler's Wells. The fun of Mr. Buck- 
stone appearing in the costume of the Ancient 
Order of Foresters, dilating on the pleasant odor 
of the back hair of the young lady he is hugging, 
and of his mixing sherry-cobblers and brandy- 
cocktails in an English drawing-room, I cannot 
discover. But all this must be funny, you see, 
because the public roar with laughter at every 
feat of mountebank horse-play ; and whatever is, 
you know, is right. 

Although Mr. Buckstone's Asa Trenchard 
does not in the slightest degree resemble either a 
E'orthern or a Southern American, it is unde- 
niably a very droll performance. But then Mr. 
Buckstone would be sure to make you laugh 



20 BREAKFAST m BED ; OB, 

were he playing the part, say of a Mute, or of 
Hamlet Prince of Denmark, or of Grim Death 
himself. He makes the most of an unnatural 
and "ungrateful role^ manifestly written doion by 
a bad dramatist to suit the morbid vanity of a 
Bowery audience — -or wherever else in Bragga- 
dociodom the thing was primarily played. In- 
deed, the whole '^ comedy '' bears evident signs 
of being written to order, and with the view of 
" cracking up " the most conceited people in the 
world. The quasi- American, from Yermont is 
made chivalrous, generous, self-sacrificing, even 
to lighting his cigar with the document which 
assures him the possession of large property ; 
while, of the two most salient English gentlemen 
rejDresented, one is a " bloated aristocrat " of a 
Baronet, hopelessly in debt, the other a vapid, 
brainless nobleman. All the types of English 
character, save Florence and Mary (who is to 
have the signal honor of marrying the Yankee), 
are absurd and repulsive. The butler is a mon- 
strosity of malaspirated H's ; the dairyman who 
brings the letters is a cringing fawner ; the law- 
yer (the villain of the piece) is a thief, and his 
clerk a drunkard. Captain De Boots is a fool 
and nothing more ; atid Mrs. Moimtchessington 
has the manners of a charwoman, and sells her 
daughters to the highest bidders. This, I sup- 
pose, is English Society. Is it? I am sure I 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 21 

don't knowo I don't go into society myself ; — 
and, my dear, I have rung twice for another 
lump of sugar ; and to-morrow "being Smiday we 
will go to the Fonndling Chapel, and be thank- 
ful for all things. 

I look upon the Lord Dundreary of Mr. 
Sothern as a most finished, ingenious, and amaz- 
ingly well-sustained delineation of a character 
he has undeniably originated : — that of a well- 
dressed but grotesque imbecile. It is easy to see 
directly he comes on the stage the man is a 
thorough actor. Like Mr. Fechter, he is never 
idle; his by-play is always exquisite, never 
obtrusive. Many comedians, when they have 
done mouthing what is set down for them, sub- 
side at once into gawky inertia ; and because 
they are no longer near the footlights, think that 
they have a right to twiddle their thumbs, to 
yawn, to stand on one leg, to gossip with their 
compeers, or to gaze vacantly at the wings. 
They are just like the Marionettes you see at 
Genoa : one moment full of spasmodic action, 
and the next flaccid and powerless, with their 
heads on one side, their backbones apparently 
drawn out, and propped against the wing. With 
Mr. Sothern it is entirely different. You never 
see too much of him, when in comparative 
repose; but you maybe always sure that he is 
doing the right thing in the right place. He 



22 BREAKFAST IN BED ; OE, 

dresses in wonderfully good taste. His costumes 
(with one exception, which. I shall notice pre- 
sently) are true to the character which, other- 
wise, he so often falsifies. His face is mar- 
vellously "made-up;" his management of an 
eye-glass as dexterous as Perea N'ena's manage- 
ment of a fan. He cannot unfold a pocket- 
handkerchief, open a letter, put on a pair of 
gloves, cross his legs, or pull his moustaches, 
without showing you that he has made those 
seemingly petty details the matter of careful and 
artistic study. Finally, to sum up his good quali- 
ties, he appears to be an admirable mimic, and 
imitates very successfully the drawl, the lisp, and 
the stutter, which he has turned to such famous 
account. He is the more entitled to praise for 
his powers of mimicry, as the tones of his natural 
voice, when heard from time to time, have a 
harsh and unpleasant twang, suggesting to those 
who hear him that Asa TrencTiard in his hands, 
or rather in his mouth, would be much more a 
lifelike performance than is the Yankee of Mr. 
Buckstone. 

And the jper contra. Is there anything to be 
said on the other side ? Can anything, without 
malice or hypercriticism, be set down in depre- 
ciation of an actor who has taken the town by 
storm, who for months has crammed the Hay- 
market to the very ceiling, whose photograph is 



• PHILOSOPHT BETWEEIT THE SHEETS. 23 

in every shop-window, whose name the theme of 
every drawing-room conversation, who has won 
colossal notoriety for himself, and has made a 
handsome fortune — for his manager? I think 
that there is a great deal to be said on the other 
side, and I mean to say it plainly, bnt tempe- 
rately. First, however, let me express my 
opinion that the responsibility of the blemishes 
to which I am about to call attention lies at the 
door, not of Mr. Sothern, not even at that of the 
playwright, who originally gave only the sketchy 
skeleton of a part which Mr. Sothern has clothed 
in such a vascular manner, but at the door of his 
audience. The gallery roar at him because he is 
full of laughable absurdities. The pit are de- 
lighted with him, because the pittites are mostly 
simple-minded country-folks, who know no more 
of the habits and manners of a live lord than 
they do of the private life of a hippopotamus. 
The stuck-up middle-classes in the boxes praise 
his impersonation as " so delightfully true to 
nature," because they themselves have rarely the 
opportunity of meeting with the aristocracy ; and 
becjiuse Mr. Sothern's Dund/rearyi^ the caricature 
of a caricature, the exaggeration of the sham copy 
they are themselves acquainted with — the Gov- 
ernment clerks and sucking bankers and stock- 
brokers' sons, who dress in an oittr^ raanner, 
know the outside of all the clubs, walk arm 



24 BEEAKFAST IN BED ; OE, 

linked four abreast in Kotten Eow, and fancy 
themselves " swells." Mr. John Leech, even, 
who ought to know his swell by heart, has blun- 
dered in seizing upon the oicter Dundrea/ry as 
the type of the inner exquisite ; and the thou- 
sands who pin their faith to the social sketches 
in " Punch " are content to believe that if Mr. 
Leech, like Mr. Lincoln, " puts down his foot '' 
on Zord Dundreary being identical with the real 
swells, with my Lord Tomnoddy, and Lord Fre- ^ 
derick Yerisopht, and — swells of swells! — the 
Marquis of Farintosh and the Honorable Percy 
Popjoy — ^Mr. Leech must be right, and no dog 
must dare bark at Sir Oracle. But I pass from 
assertion to proof. When so much is said about 
" life-like portraiture," and something " delight- 
fully true to nature," it behooves me to show in 
what manner Mr. Sothern sins against verisimi- 
litude in the character he assumes. I am in- 
clined, first, to think that Lord Dundreary'^s 
appearance in brilliantly-dyed black hair, mous- 
tache, and whiskers is, artistically considered, a 
mistake. ISTine-tenths of our English swells are 
tawny. Old swells use hair-dye (on the employ- 
ment of which by Dundreary part of the plot 
of this precious piece turns) ; young swells 
never. I will, however, pass this by, as now 
and then one meets a phenomenally sable swell ; 
only Mr. Sothern " makes up " so very darkly as 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN" THE SHEETS. 25 

to appear almost oriental. A mucli more repre- 
hensible solecism is his first entrance in an elabo- 
rately embroidered dressing-gown. Since when 
has such a careless style of attire been tolerated, 
even in the case of a nobleman, in the house of 
an English baronet, and in the presence of ladies 
and gentlemen who are all in walking dress ? 
Again, the real " swell," donkey as he frequently 
may be, would never be so positively rude and 
tmmannerly to ladies as Mr. Sothern is. He 
might be lazy, lounging and limp ; but, as the 
English swell can generally ride, drive, and 
fence very well, he is hardly ever awkward. It 
is the perfectly calm self-possession and the 
languid politeness of the swell that give him so 
unmistakeable a stamp. Mr. Sothern is always 
committing blunders, tumbling ^ over settees, 
knocking dver music-stools, or frightening old 
ladies out of their wits. He has not been three 
minutes on the stage, before he turns his back 
on the lady with whom he is conversing. I do 
not object to his sj^eaking of Jif^^s, Jfountches- 
sington^ in an under tone, as ^' a d — d stupid 
old woman," for I am afraid that the swells are 
much given to quiet profanity; but I do object 
to his jogging that lady in the stomacher and 
hustling her about the room : — I object simply 
for this reason, that if any Lord Dundreary 
adopted such a course of conduct in any English 

2 



26 BEEAKFAST IN BED ; OE5 

drawmg-room, lie would infallibly be kicked 
down-stairs by tlie bost. Of Mr. Sotliern^s 
drawl I have already expressed my admiration. 
His lisp is also very good, and is not ofFensive^ 
for tlie more imbecile among the swells do imi- 
tate or acquire by habit a lisp. But that part of 
an actor's great repntation should rest upon his 
mimicry of so painful, lamentable, and repulsive 
a physical imperfection as stammering^ strikes 
me as being very disgusting. A lisp is a slight 
matter: the stammerer and stutterer must be 
reckoned among the Almighty's afflicted crea- 
tures. If corporeal ailments are to be made the 
subject of ^Mife-like portraiture" in "comedy," 
we shall have one actor fimious for his wonderful 
delineation of the ringworm, another made 
famous through his stage-photography of a hare- 
lipj and a third gain renown for his curious copy 
of club-foot. In fact, Mr. Sothern very nearly 
approaches a parody of the last-named defect, in 
the shape of a hop, or "kick in his gallop,'^ 
which a young English lady accounts for by say- 
ing that my Lord has been advised to run, and 
that he is doing his running by instalments, 
lliis young lady, Florence (very charmingly 
played by Mrs. Charles Young), also ridicules 
Lord D%indTeary to his face for saying " wid- 
dle," instead of " riddle," an exercise of sarcastic 
humor I did not hitherto know to be habitual in 
polite society. 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 27 

Mnch of Mr. Sotliern's popularity rests on the 
incoherent nonsense he talks, and the idiotic non 
sequitvjTs in which he revels. The confusion 
arising from his utter want of the faculty of rea- 
son is certainly very amusing. For instance, 
when he tries to count his fingers and toes, and 
discovers that he has eleven of each ; when he 
sticks up one thumb to represent his mother, and 
another for his brother Sam's mother, until he 
gets into a haze between the two, and wonders 
who the d— 1 (lie is nearly always swearing) his 
mother can be, it is impossible to avoid shouting 
with laughter. I wonder, supposing my friend 
Mr. Nicholas were to send me up a Born Idiot 
from the admirable Asylum at Earlswood, and I 
were to try to procure him an engagement at the 
Haymarket, whether the drivelling balderdash 
of the poor creature would excite the risibility 
of a highly cultivated audience ? Many of Mr. 
Sothern's 7ion sequiturs are droll enough ; but 
they are not newV The enumel^ation of the fin- 
gers and toes is as old as the hills, and has made 
many generations of chaw-bacons grin when per- 
formed by Mr. Merryman in front of a booth at 
the fair. The transposition of proverbs in which 
Lord Dundreary delights is equally venerable ; 
and I had the pleasure of hearing the famous 
hotch-potch of '' the early bird knows his own 
father," and " a wise child picks up the worm" 



28 BKSAKFAST m BED ; OE^ 

(if that be the precise formula of the nonsense), 
from the month of an English clown, in the cir- 
cus at Copenhagen, and in the year of grace 
1856. Indeed, the majority of the jokes smell 
of the sawdust, and have been heard over and 
over again at Astley's. The more refined witti- 
cisms are drawn from other sources. The per- 
petual reference to " some other fellah" is only a 
paraphrase of the " any other man" of the nigger 
Btum2)-orator at the music-halls; and the joint- 
stool conversation between Dundreary and 
Georgiana at the Dairy-farm is not very skil- 
fully copied from a wonderful bit of inane chit- 
chat in one of Mrs. German Eeed's earlier enter- 
tainments. If I remember correctly, it hinged 
upon an asinine young gentleman's asking a lady 
whether she liked cheese, or wdiether, if she had 
a brother, she thought that he would like that 
caseous delicacy. 

Do I blame, do I quarrel w^ith Mr. Sothern for 
making himself 'the mouthpiece of all this bald 
bufi'oonery? Not in the least. I only quarrel 
with the silly and depraved people who persist in 
crying up as a " life-like portraiture" and " as 
delightfully true to nature" what might just as 
well be assumed to be the likeness of Beau Tibbs 
or Beau Brummel, as that of an English aristo- 
crat of the nineteenth century. I dare say the 
Americans admired Lard Dundreary hugely. To 



PHILOSOPHY Bl?rWEEN THE SHEETS. 29 

the greater number of those who flock to see Mr. 
Sothern in England, he would be quite as wel- 
come if he wore a sky-blue coat, a false nose, 
and a pink wig. . We want quantity now-a-days,. 
not quality, in our humor. The " Perfect Cure" 
has been an immense success; so has "In the 
Strand, in the Strand ;" and if anybody will tell 
me the real gist of those celebrated "comic" 
songs, I will give him any number of post obits, 
my MS. notes for the history of Merry Andrews, 
and a live guinea-pig. 

I apprehend that Mr. Sothern came to play 
this part in England in perfect good faith, and 
that he became a hero without being aware of it. 
Dundreary had had a tremendous run in Ame- 
rica; why shouldn't it go down in England? 
Mr. Sothern has been, I believe, resident for 
many years in the United States and in the Colo- 
nies. It is not very probable that he could have 
enjoyed many opportunities of studying the pe- 
culiarities of the class of whom Lord Dundreary 
is erroneously supposed to be the type. He 
created the part, or at least filled it up from a 
mere vague outline. He saw how it would 
square with his own particular notion of humor, 
how he could adapt it to his own idiosyncrasy. 
He has been triumphantly successful in the pro- 
duction of a "life-like portraiture," not of a 
dandy Lord, but of an Eccentric. I don't deny 



so BEEAKFAST IK BED ; OE, 

that there may be a Dundreafry or two wander- 
ing np and down society ; bnt I utterly repudiate 
the theory accepted by the public, and endorsed 
by the powerful pencil of Mr. Leech, that Mr. 
Sothern's Dundreary is the representative of a 
class in the community. The Haymarket actor 
has, however, succeeded, perhaps unconsciously, 
in naturalizing in England a character who, for 
many years, has been highly popular on the 
French stage. I mean the traditional Jocrisse. 
The late Mr. Kenney gave a very humorous no- 
tion of him in the Billy Lackaday of Sweet- 
hearts and Wives y* but Zord DwAdreary is a 
thorough Anglicised Jocrisse. When this droll 
imbecile is sent for a quart of oil he holds out 
his cap, which contains a pint. When asked 
how he will carry the other pint, he turns the 
cap inside out. His master tells him to count 
the chickens, and he says that he has reckoned 
them all up except one, which ran about so that 
he couldn't count it. ITe digs a hole in the 
ground ; and when asked how he means to get 
rid of the earth thrown up, replies, " Put it in 
that hole, of course." ITe asks for some stale 
bread instead of new, at dinner, and being told 
that there is none, desires that some stale bread 
maybe baked. He sees a fresh salmon at the 
fishmonger's, and announces his intention to save 
up his pocket-money until he can buy it. The 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEl^f THE SHEETS. 31 

cat jumps on to the bird-cage^ claws the canary 
out, and eats it. Hearing his mistress coming, 
JocQ'isse thrusts the cat into the cage, and de- 
clares that the eanary is quite safe^ because it is 
Id-dedans^ pointing to the imprisoned feiinao 
There are Joerisses^ under various names^ at 
IsTaples, at Palermo^ at Madrid-, at Constanti- 
nople, at Moscow, as I dare say there were like- 
wise in old Eome and old Athens, Who doesn't 
know the old, old incongruity of the traveller 
who exclaimed, "' They may well call this place 
Stoney Stratford, for I have been most terribly 
bitten by fleas I" What is that but a Dundreary- 
ism pure and simple ? The town has chosen to 
go mad after the English Joerisse ^ and the tow^n,^ 
I suppose, is perfectly right. Long live Lord 
Dundreary at the Haymarket, Blondin on the 
high rope. Leotard on the trapeze^ the Perfect 
Cure, The Strand, the Strand ! and the Beni- 
zoug-zoug Arabs! If I say that this vulgar 
farrago at the Haymarket, libellously called a 
comedy, and this clever droll, who has so suc- 
cessfully moulded it to his own purpose, made 
me think with shame and sorrow of the days 
when Wrench, Steicklakd, Fasse]^, Mathews, 
Vestris, Glover, N"isbett, trod its boards, and 
BucKSTONE gave us Englishmen to the life, and 
not galvanized travesties of Yankees, — -what am 
I but a jaundiced and splenetic croaker? The 



32 



drama is dead. Hurrali for '' sensations," comio 
or tragic! The theatrical city of Paris is not 
free from similar crazes. All Paris crowded five- 
and-forty years ago to see Zes Anglaises pour 
rire J thirty years ago to see Passe Minuit ^ 
twenty years ago to see Le The cliez Madavie 
Giboii / ten years ago to see a performer who 
had, in his way, as great a specialty as Mr. 
Sothern. His name was eloseph Kelm ; and he 
created a furore by singing a comic song called 
Le Sire dc Framboisy^ in which there was a truly 
Dundrearyish line, telling how the Sire cut off 
his wife's head d'^un coup de son fusil : — with a 
musket shot. But it strikes me that all the extra- 
vaganzas I have named ran their course at little 
trumpery Boulevard theatres ; and that the hu- 
mors of M. Joseph Kelm were confined to the 
Funambules or the Folies ^ouvelles. The Sire 
de Framboisy did not invade the chosen homes 
of comedy. Pie did not claim a triumph at the 
Theatre Frangais. 

Yes : there certainly was either too much cay- 
enne-pepper, or too much "Worcestershire sauce 
with — ^never mind what? the kidneys, the grilled 
haddock, the devilled fowl, — anything you like. 
Breakfast is over ; hot water arrives ; and Black 
Care stands over against the shaving-glass and 
Bcowls at the shaver. 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEIT THE SHEETS. 33 



ON A LITTLE BOY GOING TO SCHOOL. 

Shortly after eight o'clock every morning a 
little boy comes into the room where I Breakfast 
in Bed — a very little boy^ not so high as the 
counterpane of the conch, and clad in a little 
suit of gray frieze. He passes to a little corner 
appointed to him, partially disrobes himself, and, 
with a very grave and magisterial air, washes his 
little hands and face. That he has jnst partaken 
of a cold bath is patent from the fluify appear- 
ance of his wet hair, a slight shiver which some- 
times pervades his frame, and the occasional trace 
of a half-dried tear on his dumpling face, which 
tear, I am led, not irrationally, to believe, has a 
direct connection with sundry early morning . 
bowlings, sometimes audible to me from the up- 
per regions. I will not do servant-maids the in- 
justice to suppose that they wilfully and design- 
edly rub yellow soap or the hard corners of towels 
into little boys' eyes ; but I well remember what 
tortures I used to undergo in the tub, where I 
was washed against my will, and was of the same 
opinion still that the making of dirtpies was pre- 
ferable. " Laissez-moi jouer dans cette helle 

2* 



34 BKEAKFAST IN BED; OE5 

houe /" the Emperor IsTapoleon is reported to have 
said, pointing to a magnificent puddle visible 
from the palace window at the Hague, when his 
mamma asked him what he would like for a new- 
year's gift. It is a dreadful thing to be exposed, 
weak and defenceless, in a Tub : yourself, all face 
as the Red Indians have it, and in that smooth 
shiny condition at once a prey and a temptation 
to the horny palm of a quick-tempered nursery- 
maid. However, as this little boy is to many in- 
tents and purposes master of the house in which 
he resides, I don't think that he sufters more than 
moderate tribulations in connection with the tub. 
At all events, his sorrows are over when he comes 
down to me. It is plain that the face-and-hands- 
laving he goes through in my presence is in his 
mind a pastime, not an irksome task. It is a 
sight to see him immerse his small paws in the 
water, demurely and decorously at first, but grad- 
ually ceding to an incontroUable impulse to 
splash. At Y.30 years of age what rich mines of 
happiness are there in making a mess ! His per- 
formances with the nail brush are wonderful ; but 
they are ornamental, not useful, the little boy 
having very little nails to speak of. He goes 
nevertheless through all the traditional etiquette 
of " making himself tidy," and in so doing re- 
minds me irresistibly of a kitten of which I have 
been lately bereaved, and now of a rabbit sprue- 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. S5 

iiig himself up in the presence of a boa~constriet- 
or, unconscious that the monster in the blanket 
is about to breakfast upon him— as I^ the domes- 
tic boa (or bore), propose to do presently upon 
the little boy— not truly to the extent of devour- 
ing him, but merely with a view to making him 
my theme for half-a-dozen pages or so. He pro- 
ceeds to comb the little auburn mop which sur- 
rounds his head like a carelessly-drawn nimbus^ 
and makes ' about eight partings in indifferent 
directions in lieu of one. All of these faiU et 
gestes are, I need scarcely observe, perfunctory^ 
and merely devised for the purpose of ^^ putting 
him in the way of things." Anon he will be 
made spruce and tidy by other hands. 

He has been by no means silent during these 
varied operations. He has on entering bidden 
me good morning, and ^' passed the time of day/^ 
as it is colloquially term.ed« He has likewise, in 
the course of about ten minutes, asked me about 
fifty questions. Some of these are, I must own^ 
embarrassing, I admit that I am shakj^ as to my 
geography, and that I do not know the exact dis- 
tance from London to Turkey in Asia, I con- 
cede the general propositions started by the little 
boy that Russia looks very big on the map, and 
that it is a long way to Spain ; but when he pro- 
ceeds to cross-question me as to Sweden and Den- 
mark, and* generally to retail to me so much as 



S6 BKEAKFAST m BED; GE, 

he remembers of his last oral lesson from Miss 
Mangnall of the Preparatory Establishment for 
Young Gentlemen, I take refuge on my deaf side, 
hum something from the Trovatore^ or artfully 
start a fresh topic of conversation. But I am 
proud to say that, however close I may be run, I 
never take refuge in the time-dishonored evasion 
that ^^ little boys ought not to ask questions " — 
than which I think there is no crueller, stupider, 
or wickeder shield to your own ignorance and 
bar to another's enlightenment, extant. I re- 
member that, as a child, I used to be beaten for 
being inquisitive ; and I know that by this time 
I should be begging my bread and not earning 
it did I not pass the major portion of my time 
in asking questions. Good Heavens ! what would 
become of the world if little boys were not per- 
mitted to ask questions ? "When grown up, they 
would be at grass with ISTebuchadnezzar, and 
have one life with the beasts of the field. Yet 
may there be something belonging to the inner 
mystery of our being in this prohibition of know- 
ledge-seeking to infancy. How we lie and lie to 
children almost until they become men and wo- 
men ! How sedulously we keep secret the pri- 
mary things we know, and yet are so ready to 
impart the knowledge of that we know nothing 
of — the Devil ! The upas shadow of the Tree 
of Knowledge of Good and Evil is upen us, and 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN" THE SHEETS. 37 

we dread to drag the bantlings into it. For who 
has puberty and reason but knows that he is per- 
petually pursued by a sphynx propounding the 
"unanswerable enigma, ''"What is Life?" — failing 
to answer which the sphynx devours him and he 
dies? 

There are other ways in which the little boy's 
interrogatories are perplexing. "When he comes 
up again while I am breakfasting, to bid me 
good-bye before proceeding to school, he some- 
times asks " why I have not eaten all my bread- 
and-butter ?" I may answer, " Because I have a 
headache." He m^ay resume, " But why have I 
a headache?" To this my response may be, '^Be- 
cause I was out very late." " But why was I out 
very late?" 1 may reply, "Because I was de- 
tained at the office correcting proofs." Here I 
have the little boy on the hip. The correction 
of proofs is as yet a profound mystery to him, 
and his inquisitive faculty does not at present ex- 
tend beyond " why." When he is eight, he will 
begin to ask " what " and " where." When he_ 
is a man, he will ask " who." 

He is a condescending little boy, not at all 
proud, and is glad to act as a species of domestic 
commissionnaire, fetching and carrying such 
small matters as letters, newspapers, anchovy 
paste up and down stairs. He is told that his 
performance of these Jittle offices " saves the ser- 



38 BREAKFAST m BED ; OR, 

vants' legs f and I think that willingness and 
conrcesy on the part of children save not only the 
servants' legs bnt their tempers likewise, and that 
to teach a child to say '' if yon please " when- 
ever he asks a retainer for anything, is almost as 
nseful as a lecture npon geography. Have yon 
not known a little boy the pest and nnisance of 
and entire honse, and cursed by the subordinates 
he is permitted to bully ? The " bloated aristo- 
cracy " set us a shining example in this respect. 
Who keep their servants longest — for two gene- 
rations often— and leave them legacies when they 
die ? The haughtiest nobles, who, as a class, are 
uniformly courteous and urbane to their dcpnes- 
tics. Who change their servants once a month-— 
once a week sometimes — and are for ever wrang- 
ling and jangling with them? The ignorant, 
envious, selfish, stuck-up classes. A little boy 
tyrannizing over a servant is, next to a little boy 
lending out his pocket-money at interest, the un- 
loveliest of human sights. 

And so this quiet little creature walks and talks 
in his Lilliputian way about the house, until it is 
time for him to go to school. It is the privilege 
of the cook to convey him thither, and to fetch 
him when school is over ; and although I think 
he knows the way to Miss MangnalPs Prepara- 
tory Establishment in Great Pinnock Street much 
better than Cook (who is from the country) knows 



PHILOSOPHY EETWEEK THE SHEETS. 39 

it, he very clieerfully acquiesces in the arrange- 
ment as part of his state of nonage and pupilage. 
He would as soon think of proceeding to school 
alone as of smoking a meerschaum-pipe on his 
way thither. He thoroughly accepts and under- 
stands his position as a very little boy. ]N"ow and 
then, when I am dawdling over a book, and he, 
playing with his few toys, is adjuring imaginary 
horses, locomotive engines, or railway porters "to 
come up," or marshalling mystical armies into 
position, I catch a shrev/d -glance in the corners 
of his eyes directed towards me, as though he 
were thinking, "I dare say that I am talking 
nonsense ; but why shouldn't I talk it, being such 
a very little boy!" Children have a wonderful 
power of conjuring up invisible interlocutors; 
and I think I would much sooner hear a little boy 
" playing at being " something he is not, or con- 
versing with a fancied playmate, than witness the 
hallucination of Justice Trice in Dryden's play, 
who is discovered " playing at tables with himself, 
spectacles on, and a bottle and parmesan before 
him," crying, " Cinq and cater : my cinq I play 
here, sir } my cater here, sir. But first Pll drink 
to you, sir. Upon my faith, I'll do you reason." 
I have travelled about half-way through Break- 
fast in Bed when it is time for the little boy to 
depart for school. He comes, fully equipped for 
the Groves of Academe, to bid me farewell ; and 



40 BREAKFAST IN BED ; OR, 

although he revisits the house at midday, I see 
no more of him until evening, when just before 
dinner and his bed-time he asks me a few — say- 
half a hundred — more questions. 

I believe tliat in accordance with the modern 
formula of essay-writing I should properly cry, 
^' I^ curre!^'^ to this little boy, and say something 
about his youth, his innocence, his big blue eyes, 
and his fair hair curling like the young tendrils 
of the vine. I elect to do nothing whatever of 
the kind. He is simply a very grave problem 
and study to me; and whither his life-journey 
may tend I am sure I don't know. For the sake 
of his few surviving relatives I trust that he will 
not be hanged ; but who knows ? Who can tell ? 

" Oh toi qui passes par ce cloitre, 
Recueilles-toi : tu n'es pas sur 
De voir s'allonger et s'accroit^^ 
Un autre jour ton ombre au mur." 

So sings very sweetly and sadly M. Theophile 
Gautier. So is it with the most tenderly-nurtured 
childhood. This little boy, I humbly hopo, will 
lack no careful blue-aproned gardener, no hot- 
water pipes, no artful composts or well-glazed 
conservatory to grow him ; but when he is grown, 
what next ? Can I insure the fruit against the 
inroads of innumerable animalculse, now to us 
invisible? For the credit of humanity, I hope 
and believe that most of those who have the 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 41 

charge of a child regard that charge as awful in 
its responsibilities. I look around and see 
churches and schools crowded with young child- 
ren ; but, alas, are they only the neglected or the 
ill-treated ones who come to grief? The ab- 
surdity of a mother telling you that the baby she 
is nursing is to be an engineer or a barrister 
seems palpable enough ; but do not the sternest, 
most matter-of-fact parents and guardians fall 
into absurdities quite as ridiculous? Try to 
speculate upon the future of the thousands of 
charity children whose silver Toices float up- 
wards, once a year, into the dusky space of the 
Great Dome of St. Paul's. Essay to predict what 
is to become of the eight hundred Eton boys who 
are flocking into the Great Western Railway 
carriages, and coming whooping home from the 
holidays. The charity boys and girls are sedu- 
lously and piously taught ; the Eton boys are 
watched over by grave and learned divines, 
destined perchance to become archbishops. And 
what next ? " That living flood, pouring through 
those streets, of all qualities, all ages, knowest 
thou whence it is coming, whither it is going i 
Aus der Ewiglceitj zu der Evngheit hin — From 
Eternity, onwards to Eternity. These are ap- 
paritions : what else ?" 

The philoprogenitive reader will have scarcely 
failed to discover long before this that the little 



42 BREAKFAST IK BED; OR, 

boy I have been speaking of does not belong to 
nie. Indeed he is no child of mine. Albeit I 
am his Uncle, no blood of mine is in his veins. 
He is a smiling yonng Anglo-Saxon, with an 
English face and English eyes. This admis 
sion may, as I have hinted, be entirely super- 
fluous. Lord bless you ! if he were my child, 
I should have broken out long since, in rap- 
tures. I should have apostrophised him as 
my pet, my poppet, my darling, my winsome, 
tricksome baby-boy. He knows that I regard 
him as neither winsome nor tricksome, and that 
I would rather not have any of his tricks. There 
is nobody in the house to call him poppet or pet, 
or to cuddle and cocker him. Until he grows 
up and loses his heart to a woman, or has money 
to lend to a man, he will find none to flatter him. 
'' Poor neglected cherub !" the fond mother may 
exclaim, ^^ to pine away under this cold, harsh 
tutelage !" I don't think, to judge from his ring- 
ing laughter, and the quantity of bread and but- 
ter he eats, that he is at all disposed to pine 
away. Indeed he seems to be about as happy as 
the day is long. If, by Heaven's wisdom, he has 
been deprived of that flood of passionate afi*ection 
Avhich only parents can bestow, he is safe, on the 
other hand, from those tempests of unjust anger 
and ferocity in which only parents are permitted 
to indulge. I have generally found that the in- 



PHILOSOPHY" BETWEEIT THE SHEETS. 43 

dulgent parents thrasli their darlings most. The 
spoilt child gets seldom that most inestimable 
boon in education — Eqiiity — in the judgments 
passed upon him ; that Equity which is " the 
right witness that considereth all the particular 
circumstances of the deed, the which also is tem- 
pered with the sweetness of mercy.'' In house- 
holds where the honey -pot is always open, there 
seldom fails to be an abundance of wax (spelt 
" whacks") ; yet do I hope to solve the problem of 
bringing up a child that I have not begotten with- 
out spoiling and without laying a finger on him. 
O ho ! this paragraph must surely awaken 
Hircius and Spungius. " Misanthrope ! Egotist ! 
Vile sciolist !" I hear those worthies yelp. '' Miser- 
able Yahoo, following in the trail of Swift. Does 
he, forsooth, wish to enter the nursery like an 
ogre, and declare war upon infants ? What does 
he know about children ? Had he ever a baby ?" 
Even so, I am childless ; but am I out of court ? 
Hircius, I know, has fruitful loins. He has but 
to cast a stone over the workhouse wall to hit 
one of his brats. Spungius is great in babies ; 
deafens people with their praises while alive, 
borrows money to bury them when they die. If 
I had ever known this little boy in babyhood, I 
think I could manage to say something senti- 
mental on the baby-question. It would have 
been egotistical, but still an egotism that the 



4:4: BKEAKFAST IN BED ; ORj 

whole world pardons. This is the country of 
baby worship ; and the baby-devotee is never 
accused of being an idolater. It is a safe thing 
tO'Write sentimentally about babies. Baby litera- 
ture is sure to sell. Some modern authors have 
taken to saying their prayers in print ; others to 
praising their own works ; and a few to abusing 
their species ; but the most popular form of litera- 
ture is that .which lends itself to pouring melted 
butter over one's own chicks. , Here, by my bed- 
side is a fat little volume, gorgeous in crimson 
and gold, lately put out by Messrs. Eoutledge, 
and bearing the highly popular name of 
William 0. Bennett. I open the book at ran- 
dom, and read : 

'' Cheeks as soft as July peaches ; 
Lips whose dewy scarlet teaches 
Poppies paleness ; round large eyes, 
Ever great with new surprise. 

* * 5if ^ 

Clutching fingers, straightening jerks, 
Twining feet whose each toe works. 

Slumbers — such sweet angel seemings, 
That we'd ever have such dreamings. 

* * * * 
Gladness brimming over gladness ; 
Joy in ease, delight .in sadness ; 
Lovliness beyond completeness ; 
Sweetness distancing all sweetness; 
Beauty all that Beauty may be,— 
That's May Bennett, that's my baby." 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEK THE SHEETS. 45 

There are over two-score couplets in this poem ; 
but I have only been able to quote a few lines. 
I am not at all inclined to sneer at these verses 
as namby-pamby, or to cavil at such somewhat 
too plastic versification as " gladness " and " sad- 
ness/' '^ seemings '' and '^ dreamings." I am 
glad to recognise in Mr. "William C. Bennett a 
very tender, musical, fascinating lyrist. I am 
sure he means all that he says, and more. I am 
given to understand that he has earned the title 
of the " Laureate of the Babies," and that his 
chirping, kindly books sell by tens of thousands. 
And I shall not have, perhaps, one in a thousand 
readers who will regard my view of the baby 
question with anything but contempt and abhor- 
ence. I turn over the leaves of Mr. Bennett's 
pretty book, and light on an infinity of baby 
lyrics: ''Baby May," "Baby's shoes," "Tod- 
dling May," " Cradle songs," " Mother's songs," 
"To our Baby Kate," "Epitaphs for infants," 
" On a Dead Infant," and many more on the 
same sweet, well-worn, but not worn-out theme. 
I have already expressed my faith in Mr. Ben- 
nett's sincerity. In his engraved portrait by the 
frontispiece he looks like a man who loves 
babies; and thousands of mothers, I have no 
doubt, tearfully murmured " God bless him !" 
when they read his poems. Surely it is wicked, 
sardonic, to come prowling into this baby para- 



46 



dise and trample down the daisies. But Dnty is 
a stern monitor, and Duty compels me to ask 
wlietlier the intensity of baby worship does not 
depend^ after all^ on circumstances^ and whether 
those circumstances do not often alter cases in a 
very strange and melancholy manner? It is 
probable that Mr. Bennett lives in a very nice 
house, and has everything that heart can wish 
for ; that his babies are brought to him at proper 
times and seasons, duly spruced and 'beautified, 
and that there is a five-barred gate on the nur- 
sery landing to prevent his young ones tumbling 
down-stairs. Yiewed through this radiant me- 
dium, this atmosphere of blue-kid shoes and 
satin bows, pap-spoons, corals, laced robes, em- 
broidered hoods, and plumed hats — ^wdth any 
amount of baby linen procurable from the Spon- 
salia, and a kind doctor always ready round the 
corner in case of infantile ailments— the baby 
becomes indeed a delight and a treasure ; it is 
another element in British comfort. It is as 
much a part of papa's home joys as his slippers, 
his '^ Illustrated IsTews,'' or his evening tumbler. 
A well-to-do middle-class house is hardly com- 
plete without a filter, a Kent's knife-cleaner, a 
moderator lamp, and a baby. All these articles 
are to be found in their several places, and min- 
ister in their several degrees to the felicity and 
solace of those who possess them. . But how 



PHILOSOPHY BETWIiEiT THE SHEETS. 47 

about the hovel where a baby is born, and there 
is nothing but a baker's old jacket to wrap it 
in ? How about the babies of shame that are 
packed np in hampers, strangled in secret places, 
flung into dustbins, deserted on doorsteps ? Who 
writes sonnets on the workhouse babies, or 
mourns over their fate when they are burnt to 
death by twenties ? "When poverty and naked- 
ness and hunger sit grinning on the poor man's 
hearth, is the sick baby a household joy or a 
household misery ? Oh, my brethren (since 
homilies are the fashion), how we brag and 
boast and bemuse ourselves about our own 
babies, and^ how little we reck about what be- 
come^ of other people's babies ! How the piousi 
and decorous matron drives from her door the 
wretched nursemaid who has a base-born infanf ! 
If. this baby worship were sincere, and not a 
congested kind of personal vanity, often gro- 
tesque enough, and of which the still more ludi- 
crous side was to be seen in the abominable 
American baby-shows, should we not feel in- 
clined to devise some measures to prevent babies 
being murdered or starved, to force profligate 
men to make provision for their by-blows? 
What is the much- vaunted baby in the manufac- 
turing disfeicts but a thing to be drugged with 
" cordials '^ and '' elixirs," or to be " overlaid ?" 
Ask the parish undertaker what he knows about 



48 BREAKFAST IK BED ; OE5 

the dark side of babyhood. Ask the parish 
doctor, ask Dr. Lankester the coroner, We go 
on simpering forth fiddled ee about our own 
babies, and pass, indifferent, through a whole 
Golgotha of dead babies' bones. I am as poor, 
Heaven knows, as Job, and have a hard struggle 
to make both ends meet ; yet I would cheerfully 
woik my fingers to the bone, and be my hun- 
dred pounds to any one else's hundred, to estab- 
lish were it the tiniest nucleus of a real Found- 
lino Hospital in lieu of that sham place in 
Guildford Street, where the ^' mother " is to 
"present herself before the committee" before 
the foundling can be admitted. I declare that 
jobbed and perverted charity is enough to 
make the bones of Thomas Coram turn in their 
grave. 

When I read of the delightful, smiling, tod- 
. dling little thing Mr. Bennett so charmingly de- 
scribes — when I see the baby portraits and 
baby '' pistolgrams '' advertised — when I wander 
in a wilderness of perambulators, india-rubber 
balls, lollipops, hoops, kid-shoes, and so forth 
— I think sometimes that it is good to hang 
a bunch of hyssop in the wine cup, and to ask 
whether we do not plume ourselves somewhat 
too much about the beauty and happiness and 
purity of babyhood. I think I have glanced 
more than once upon a poor little gasping lump 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 49 

of damp dough, with a chronic stomach-ache. 
I think Shakespeare has drawn in half a dozen 
words a terrible life-like picture of the human 
baby. And, as a final corrective to overweening 
pride in babies, I turn to my Thomas a Kempis, 
and in the preface read these true and mournful 
lines : 

'' The hummi infant is a picture of such de- 
formity^ weakness^ naJcedness^ and helpless di^- 
iress^ as is not to ie found among the home-lorn 
animals of this world. The chiclcen has its 
hirth from no sin. and therefore comes forth in 
heauty / it runs and peeks as soon as its shell is 
hroken / the calf and the lamh go loth to play as 
soon as the dam is delivered of them / they are 
pleased with themselves, and please the eye that 
ieholds their frolicksome state and heaitteous 
clothing / whilst the new-lorn Idle of a woman^ 
that is to have an upright form, and view the 
heavens, and worship the Ood that made them^ 
lies for months in gross ignorance, weakness and 
iinpurity / as sad a spectacle when he first 
Ireathes the life of this world, as when, in the 
agonies of death, he Ireathes his last,'^^ 

I think it would do all of us good, the childful 
as well as the childless, to ponder a little over 
these words before we bragged too much about 
Baby. 



3 



50 BEEAKFAST m BED ; OE, 



01^ WR. HAVOE'S SPELLING-BOOK. 

My Library is not a very extensive one. The 
publishers rarely send me copies of new works, for 
the very sufficient reason that, when they do, I 
generally abuse them. My brother authors, I fear, 
don't like me, and I certainly don't like them ; 
and so they have given up forwarding me pre- 
sentation copies of their productions. On my 
few shelves, I am glad to say, there are no works 
of my own. 

Who would wish to preserve the double-tooth, 
wrenched, after so many dire dental struggles, 
from the unwilling jaw? Who, but a hypo- 
chondriac would keep an assorted collection of 
coffin nails in his study — £nd what are a man's 
own printed writings but so many nails in his 
coffin? When one has been long on the rack, 
and is quit of it till to-morrow morning, it is as 
well to double-lock the door of the Torture- 
Room, and hide the dismal engine of agony from 
view. 

How you, my eminent friend, regard the little 
novels, essays, dramas, poems, etc., your facile 
pen has composed, I know not. To me the labors 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 51 

of my hand are but so many memorials of research 
in vain, want, anguish, and defeat. But then, 
perhaps, you are not in the habit of wrestling 
with wild-beasts at Ephesus, or of endeavoring to 
convince a perverse generation. Better, no doubt, 
to be a comfortable lion in the Ephesian mana- 
gerie, and to take one's shinbone of beef thank- 
fully. In the preface to his noblest work, says 
Father Paul : " Tengo per fermo che quesf opera 
sara di pochi letta^ ed in hreve tempo 7nanGherd 
di mta^ non tamio per diffetto di fovma^ quanto 
perlanatura dellamaler^a^^ — ^which in our tongue 
signiiieth this : that there is no use in striving ; 
that if your book has all the learning of Bellar- 
min, and all the acumen of Dom Calmet, and all 
the painstaking of Florez, and all the majesty of 
Tillotson, and all the eloquence of Taylor, and all 
the wit of Swift, it shall not save its author from 
being sneered at, in a bankrupt review, as an 
ignorant dolt — ^sneered at by a boy-critic, who 
six months since was caned at school ; that, 
cunning, artistically, as your book may be, it 
must be essentially fading and ephemeral ; and 
that the highest tide of success will not rescue 
it at last from the fourpenny-box at a book- 
stall. 

And woe to him, unless he be a Giant, who 
dedicates his w^ork to Posterity, and trusts in after 
ages to do him justice. Posterity! Posterity 



63 



"will singe a goose with your magnum opus. 
After ages ! They will wrap penn'orths of pud- 
ding in the nnsold sheets of your Epic. Waters 
of Marah to him who deems liimself a benefactor 
to his kind, and holds himself as necessary to the 
world's scheme ! Jeremy Bentham so did ; and 
who, save a few who meet once a year to dine 
with his mummy, are grateful to Jeremy Ben- 
tham, the Father of Reform ? Necessary ! " It is 
the disease of Princes," said Napoleon (when he 
found that the nations had had enough of him), 
" to believe themselves necessary. ISTo man is 
necessary — I, no more than the others. Alex- 
ander and Csesar are dead, and still the world 
rolls on its course without them." And let this 
be a warning to you, Tupper, hero of six-and-forty 
editions. 

And yet I know there are authors who love to 
look upon the things they have written — nay, 
dote upon them, calling them by endearing 
names, thinking the worst the best, and bestow- 
ing GroUier and Kenaissance bindings, gold 
scrolling, and blind tooling upon them. Our 
deformed brats are often the best beloved. So 
used Monsieur Frangois-Marie-Arouet, called Vol- 
taire, to fondle his multifarious writings. Be- 
hold the weazened, shrivelled, hatchet-faced, 
wicked-eyed Patriarch of Ferney, in coat of cut- 
velvet, and silken-covered spindle-shanks, and 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 53 

towering white periwig, hugging the Edito Prin- 
cess of his ^' Pucelle," which he has had bound in 
sable morocco. When he is in a good temper, 
he caresses the scurril tome, and calls it " Ma 
Jeanne — ma Jeanneton /" — the old rascal ! When 
he is in evil case, and bethinks himself that a 
Day must come for frying and howling, he 
spurns the polecat thing, and cries " Ce livre-ld 
a ete ecrit par un laqiiais ivreP The great 
authors of the present day may be equally par- 
tial to their bantlings. 

And those great authors, who are they ? Let 
me hasten to name the Editor of '^ZadldeFs Al- 
manac," the scholar and gentleman who pens the 
dramatic criticisms in the "London Gazette" 
(published by authority), and Mr. George Francis 
Train. I would have whispered thy name, my 
Hircius ; but thou art modest. Spungius, thy 
alias should have been added to the list, but that 
I know thee to be fierce in opposition to the pre- 
sent Ministry ; nor would I expose Lord Palmer- 
ston by indiscreetly calling attention to thy 
merits to the humiliation of seeing a proffered 
pension refused by Spungius, the upright and in- 
corruptible, 

" Ah^ qiie nous no sommes rien .^" cried Bos- 
suet, preaching on earthly vanities before the 
gilded court at Yersailles, who, of a certainty, 
thought " some punkins " of themselves. Oh, 



64 BREAKFAST IK BED; OE, 

Eagle of Meaux, thou errest ! Evil is an entity, 
and we are bad ; and to be bad is to be some- 
tliing. For instance, this morning. Breakfasting 
in Bed, I feel as bad as bad can be, morally and 
physically. It is an abominable foggy morning. 
I have complained of the fog, which is wrong. 
To be right I should have been resigned to any 
little variation in the weather. Then I was angry 
because they would not let me have any muffins. 
"Why should I be deprived of muffins ? There 
used to be muffins. But four months since, I 
had new-laid eggs every morning at dear old 
U. C. ; I never thought of Breakfasting in Bed 
there. ISTow, a dingy bolus, with dusky specks 
of straw glued to its shell, reminds me, by its 
mustiness, of the blessings of the Anglo-French 
Treaty of Commerce. A French egg this, and 
charged at the price of a new-laid one. The 
newspapers, too, came late. The mendacious 
newsboy said that the '^machine had broken 
down." What ! all the machines ? Yf as there, 
then, a conspiracy against all the presses in 
pressdom? In fact, it was this lack of journal- 
ism that led me first to quarrel with my break- 
fast, and then to begin thinking about books, and 
thence to turn to their writers, and then to be- 
moan myself, and say that I didn't like my 
brother authors; whereas, the truth is, that I 
love them dearly, every one. Bless them ! It is 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEElSr THE SHEETS. 55 

clear that I am in an envious, discontented, 
and tlioroughly uncliaritable state of mind this 
-morning. 

"Will the little book I keep under my pillow 
console me? I turn up page 167, and read, 
" Constantly endeavor to do the will of another 
rather than thy own. Constantly prefer a state 
of want to a state of abundance. Constantly 
choose the lowest place, and to be inferior to all. 
He that doeth this, enters into the regions of 
rest and peace." These beautiful words either 
mean something or nothing. They cannot be 
accepted with a Jesuitical reservation. If I con- 
strue them literally, I must, if my publishers tell 
me to write down freedom, progress, and educa- 
tion, do their will and not my own, which runs 
in precisely the contrary direction. I must 
abandon all hopes of muffins, because it is the 
will of others that I should not have them. I 
must constantly prefer going in rags, dwelling 
in a garret, and pinching my belly, to wearing 
warm broadcloth, to living in a snug house, to 
dining on roast mutton. If I am invited to take 
the chair at the annual festival of the Charitable 
Crumpet-Makers, I must decline the honor, or 
solicit employment as a waiter or plate-washer 
at the London Tavern. The sentences I have 
quoted are not from an inspired writer, and I am 
therefore guiltless of irreverence in discussing 



56 BEEAKFAST IN BED ; OE, 

them ; but I saw lately in the shop-window of a 
stationer in Chancery Lane a schedule of rules to 
be observed by pious persons in the conduct of 
their daily life^ each rule fortified by a scriptural 
^text. 

I say boldly, that if we acted up to the letter 
of these rules, society could not exist, and the 
world would become a howling desert. How 
could we get on if nobody took the chair ; if 
everybody went tattered, and denied himself 
food ; if nobody exerted the Will that Heaven 
has implanted in him ? And is it not the grossest 
simulation, the most " unsophisticated hypocrisy,'^ 
as Sir Jonah Barrington pleonastically puts it, to 
go on chattering about what we ought to do, 
when we are perfectly aware that we cannot do 
it, and that the whole scheme of human govern- 
ment and society forbids us even to attempt it ? 

Whereupon I return to my Library. The 
motive of my alluding to it at all you shall pre- 
sently hear. I am cudgelling my brains to re- 
member if it contains a Spelling-book. It is so 
many years since I conned that useful volume. 
Dictionaries and vocabularies I have galore, in 
many tongues. Do I not prize a certain dimly- 
printed collection of " Domestic Dialogues," 
written in French, German, Russian, and Latin, 
in which there is positively a conversation on 
drinking beer and smoking tobacco : " De Fie- 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 57 

tilibus tvMs ad usum NicotianaP Says A of 
the Yirginian weed : '^ Equidem fuini haustu 
non utor^ sed pulvere ahutorP A is no smoker, 
but a snuffer. Remarks the Ciceronian B of 
beer, '^ Cerevisia inter Nicotiana usimi gratior 
gustus^ sine qua ne uti quidem hac possum, j 
quippe qui sitim creefJ^ This classical gentleman, 
thinks that a glass of AUsopp's Bitter goes well 
with a pipe of bird's-eye, and acknowledges him- 
self a beery one ; for tobacco parches a man, 
says he. Then have I not the learned Harris's 
" Hermes", of which more anon, as the profound 
Hodderius says ; and Sir John Stoddart's " TJni- 
yersal Grammar," which to me is as universal 
confusion as Kant's " Critique of Pure Eeason," 
(which Spungius understands so well) ? I pass 
over Trench " On Words," Grose's "Lexicon Bala- 
tronicum," Pegge's "Defence of the Cockney Dia- 
lect," and Home Tooke's " Diversions of Purley ;" 
for this morning I thirst only for a Spelling-book. 
"Where is Mavor? Is there a Mavor in the 
House ? The newspapers arrive, and I become 
more and more anxious for a Spelling-book. 

Here is, it would seem, no work of reference 
of that description in my Library; but at last a 
dog's-eared fasciculus, much blurred with pencil- 
marks, and smutched and smirched — I trust not 
with infant tears — is discovered in the possession 
of the Little Boy introduced to the reader in the 

8* 



58 BREAKFAST IN BED; OS, 

second of these Papers. He is at first loth to 
give up Mavor ; but he at least is practically 
taught that it is his duty ta do another's will in 
preference to his own. Mayor is taken from him 
for the use of his cruel uncle ; but a written re- 
ceipt and explanation of cause for detention is 
given to him, to bear him harmless on his arrival 
at Miss Mano;nalPs establishment. 

Here is Mavor at last. Revised by Cecil Hart- 
ley, A.M. ; the one hundred and seventieth tliou- 
eand. Here are the famous short lessons : " His 
pen has no ink in it ;" '' I met a man with a pig ;" 
" Do as you are told, or it may be bad for you." 
This is rather fierce in its minatory style, and 
Dr. Mavor must have got it from Dr. Busby. 
" Come, James, make haste. Now read your 
book. Here is a pin to point with." ' Little boys 
are not allowed to point with pins nowadays. 
" Tom fell in the pond. He was a bad boy. Jack 
Hall was a good boy. He took pains to learn as 
he ought, and made all the great boys his friends." 
But these characters have been, I think, more 
tersely sketched in the unpublished ISTursery Edda 
of the Titmarshian Sage : 

*' Little Jack Snook, 

Was fond of his book, 
And was much beloved by his master ; 

But naughty Jack Spry 

Has got a black e?/e, 
And carries his nose in a plaster. "^^ 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS, 59 

Tlien comes the story of tlie nice girl, but who 
was not good, and told fibs, and whose cake was 
eaten by a mouse; then the apologue of Miss 
Jane Bond, who had a new doll, aud whose good 
aunt gave her some cloth to make a shift for it 
O Mr. Cecil Hartley, A.M., do you call this edit- 
ing Mavor? You should have discreetly sub- 
stituted for that sad passage about the S — a neat 
paragraph to the effect that Miss Jane Bond's 
aunt proceeded to the Lilliputian "Warehouse in 
Eegent Street, and there purchased some " under- 
clothing " for her niece's doll. 

This benevolent lady was doubtless the Mrs»* 
Bond who appears to have kept an inn or hotel 
in the rural districts, and who, when the travellers 
were hungry and desired that their stomachs 
might be filled, cried out to the ducks in the 
pond, "Dilly, dilly, dilly, come and be killed;'' 
but they would not, whereupon Mrs. Bond 

" Flew in a very great rage, 
With plenty of onions and plenty of sage." 

And it was bad for the ducks, because they would 
not do what they were told. 

Frank Pitt and his fat cheeks ; Jane whose 
hand was tied up in a cloth ; the girl who tied 
the string to the bird's leg; and Harry who 
gorged his cake and was sick ; and Peter Careful, 
who ate a little piece of his cake (the young cur- 
mudgeon !) every day, but kept it till it grew 



60 



mouldy and wortliless : all these friends of my 
youth I meet and pass by ; and then I come to 
Richard — Richard Coeur de Lion he ought to be 
called — who said to his schoolmates, " I have got 
a cake ; let us go and eat it ;'' and when they had 
all eaten, there remained a piece, which Richard 
put by, saying, '^I will eat it to-morrow." 
But a blind man came into the play-ground — • 
but Mavor shall tell the rest : " He said, ' My 
pretty lads, if you will, I will play you a tune.' 
and they all left their sport, and came and stood 
round him. And Richard saw that while he 
played, the tears ran down his cheeks. And 
Richard said, ' Old man, why do you cry V And 
the old man said, ' Because I am hungry : I have 
no-bo-dy to give me any dinner or supper : I have 
nothing in the world but this little dog, and I 
cannot work. If I could w^ork I would.' Then 
Richard went, without saying a word, and fetched 
the rest of his cake, which he had intended to 
eat another day ; and he said, ' Here, old man, 
here is some cake for you.' The old man said, 
' Where is it ? for I am blind ; I cannot see it.' 
So Richard put it into his hat. And the fiddler 
thanked him ; and Richard was more glad than 
if he had eaten ten cakes himself." 

I wish that Mr. Mulready or Mr. Webster 
would take Richard and the blind fiddler as a 
subject for a picture; and I have often thought 
this simple story to be one of the noblest and 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 61 

most pathetic narratives in the English, lan- 
guage. 

Still turning over the trim tome bound in 
green cloth, which, by virtue of a forced loan 
from the Little Boy, has come into my possession, 
I cannot avoid murmuring that it is not the 
Mavor of my youth ; that it has experienced 
change, and that the change has not been one 
for the better. My old spelling-book was bound 
in light-speckled sheepskin, and had a warm, 
portmanteau-like odor. The modern Mavor 
has portraits of animals, drawn with symmetry 
and vigor by Mr. Harrison Weir; the old book 
was decorated with the vilest vignettes that sign- 
painter turned draughtsman ever imagined, or 
wood-chopper flourishing long before Bewick or 
Thurston ever hacked. Strange heraldic-looking 
animals — griffins, unicorns, roaring bulls of 
Bashan, monsters and chimeras dire— passed 
current for lions and tigers and the domestic 
animals. But what did we little children care, so 
long as we could smear the coarse cartoons with 
blue a:id red and yellow ochre ? And was the 
fable of the Dog and the Shadow less suggestive 
because the dog was not in the least like his 
adumbrated duplicate, and was besides as big, 
according to the scale of comparison, as the ele- 
phant in the next cut? And the frontispiece, 
again ! 

The new Mavor shows a pretty tableaux of 



62 



Home ; a young mother, surrounded by a cliirp- 
ing little brood of those children whom Mr. 
Gilbert draws so charmingly— little girls in long • 
curls and short trousers, cherub-faced boys in 
pretty tunics. They are hanging over the spel- 
ling-book with as much pleased interest in their 
little faces as though Mavor were Baron Mun- 
chausen. In the foreground is a toy-horse of 
the regular buff-coat and red-wafer pattern. Ah, 
dear me, dear me ! the old Mavor had a very 
different kind of frontispiece. Showed it not 
three grim compartments, stages or floors ; in 
the uppermost a boy-class of shivering little 
wretches, ranged before the desk of a stern usher, 
who wore his hat and bore a cane ? 

We all settled that this was an usher; for 
although ferocious, he looked poor. There 
was a frigid gloom about that top-storey pic- 
ture, at once suggestive of the horrible winter 
mornings at school, the lessons before breakfast, 
and agonizing incandescence produced in numbed 
palms by " spats " of the cane. The middle 
compartment represented a ladies'-school : such 
a Miss Tickletoby in the chair, such a Mrs. 
Teachem ! 

" Come here, Master Timothy Todd — 

Before we have done you'll look grimmer ; 
YouVe been spelling some time for the rod, 
But I'll have you to know I'm a Trimmer." 



BHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 63 

I am sure Thomas Hood must have had the 
woodcut portrait of this terrible old dame in 
his mind's eye when he wrote (and illustrated) 
the fancy portrait of Mrs. Trimmer in his 
" Comic Annual." 

It may be that I have been mixing up the pic- 
tures of the old Mavor with those of the old 
Dilworth. At all events, both spelling-books 
had strange representations of boys in frills, and 
coats with two-inch tails, of schoolmistresses in 
mob-caps, and pedagogues in long dressing- 
gowns. And Dilworth and Mavor were both 
illustrated with " cuts," while intempestive con- 
templation of their wood-blocks brought little 
boys into intimate connection with another block 
of wood, whence the engravings are struck off 
in red ink. I do not wish any one to laugh at 
these forced jests. Let them shudder, and shut 
up Mavor. 

But why did I ever open him ? What have I 
to do at my age with a baby's spelling-book? 
A great deal, I think. Mavor is an admirable 
corrective for conceit. A cursory reference to 
his pages will tell many a scholar, inflated with 
the big books he has been studying, a great 
many things he did not know before. I declare 
that, until breakfast time this morning, I did 
not know — or had forgotten — that cow's-horn is 
"used instead of glass for lanterns." I had 



64 BREAKFAST IN BED ; OR, 

heard, of course, of horn lanterns, but deemed 
them to be obsolete. Judge of my astonish- 
ment to find them glimmering in the Mayor of 
1862! 

Again, that the white hair of goats was '^ valu- 
able for wigs." Ignoramus ! I thought that bar- 
risters' wigs were made of horsehair, and the 
Lord Mayor's coachman's jasey of spun-glass. 
We are never too old to learn. 

The which confirms me in my estimate of the 
advantage we may derive from occasionally con- 
sulting in mature life the simplest elementary 
works. What do we know about things, after 
all ? I should like to get this exceedingly wide- 
awake Bishop Colenso into a corner, and put 
him through a course of Mavor, and Pinnock, 
and Mangnall, and the " Guide to Knowledge." 
The right reverend father is the author of a very 
good book on arithmetic, I am told ; but I doubt 
whether he has been lately bestowing much 
attention on such simple problems as " If a her- 
ring and a half cost three-halfpence, how many 
herrings can you get for a shilling ?" Propound 
this to me, O Colenso ! Do you know what ink 
is made of ? Can you tell me how the angles of 
Westminster Abbey are subtended on the retina 
of a bull's-eye ? Do you know anything about 
the manufacture of boot-varnish ? Can you 
bite-in a copper-plate ? Do you know who in- 



. PHILOSOPHY BETWEEIT THE SHEETS. 65 

vented braces ? Can you inform me when steel 
pens were first used ? Can you find me a rhyme 
for Hippopotamus? Could you undertake to 
supply a weekly satirico-political cartoon for 
'' Punch ?" Can you define what human wit is ? 
Do you know (but here I borrow from sturdy old 
Paley) how oval frames are turned ? 

Go away Bishop of the Black Man ! Go 
to your Pinnock, or to your " Punch " even ; for 
you would derive more wisdom from the study 
of that periodical, than from ])uzzling your 
poor brains about the Pentateuch ! Before the 
doubts of a Hume, a Gibbon, a Volney, a Yol- 
taire, a Condorcet, a Mirabeau, one stands 
amazed, aghast, to see the mighty intellects ob- 
scured by clouds, the giants ridden by the incu- 
bus who wears a cock's feather in his cap, and 
in a shrill fluted voice Denies, Denies for ever. 
Before the perplexities of a Pascal, a Hobbes, a 
Gassendi, one stands awed and hushed, l^ay, 
in the reckless foaming infidel, his hands 
clenched, his eyes glaring, his hair blown about 
by the Eternal Storm, and vociferating his 
hoarse "No!" there is something gigantic, 
though appalling. There maybe abandonment, 
but there may be rectitude.' The martyrs of 
unbelief are often as self-sacrificing as the mar- 
tyrs of faith. But for this small-beer scepticism, 
this Tom Paineism in a white choker, this 



66 



Straussology adapted to small tea-parties, tMs 
genteel froe-tliinking for family reading — faugli ! 
it tastes in the mouth like a bad groat. 

Off, Dr. C. ! Away, Mr. Wilkie Collinso ! I 
will have none of your " sensations " about the 
Books of Moses. And, butler — my butler wears 
crinoline — H. M. and B. J. are coming to din- 
ner to-day, and we will have a bottle of the 
right red seal, not the cheap Cape I have 
bought lest Spungius should pop in. For I love 
not South- African port — nay, nor South- African 
theology. 

And before I shut up my Mavor, there is a 
particular class in society to w^hich I desire to 
commend the attentive study of the Spelling- 
book. O you noble captains, you brave swells, 
you honest, jovial, intrepid, kind-hearted, igno- 
rant young officers in the Heavies and in the 
Prancers, rush off to your booksellers and invest 
in all the copies of the spelling-books that re- 
main unsold. Let your devotion henceforth be 
to Mars, Bacchus, and Apollo — but don't forget 
Mavor. If more English gentlemen belonging 
to the military patrician class, had a commonly 
decent acquaintance with English orthography, 
don't you think that we should have fewer " bubble 
bets," that the Admiral would not " abhor" the 
Colonel quite so often, and that one's Breakfast 
in Bed would not be poisoned by the '^Turf 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 67 

scandals," of whicli tlie recapitulation has been 
lately the nuisance and disgrace of the nlorning 
newspapers ? 

Don't think that I wish to launch into a vio- 
lent tirade against Colonel Eawdon Crawley, or 
Captain De Boots, or Lieutenant Guy Living- 
stone. I think them much better fellows than 
Colonel James, or Captain Booth, or Lieutenant 
Lismahago. I^ay, when I compare them with 
M. le Chef le Bataillon Fracasse de la Tapagerie, 
or M. le Capitaine Gamelle Boutenfeu, I strike 
the balance in favor of the English officer, and 
think him no worse soldier for being a gentle- 
man. But he should learn to spell. He should, 
indeed. Colonel Eawdon Crawley should be 
able -to write his letters without the aid of a 
" Johnson's Dictionary ;" Captain De Boots 
should be cured of spelling kept " kep," and 
Mediterranean " Meddytirainian." 

I know that Lord Malmesbury doesn't attach 
much value to accurate orthography ; and I can 
guess the reason. His Lordship's father was 
that same learned Mr. Harris who wrote the 
" Hermes "—alluded to at the commencement of 
this Paper — and who was one of the most eru- 
dite philological writers of whom this country 
can boast. Depend upon it, that the noble Lord 
had quite enough spelling-book cheer in his youth 
to last him for a lifetime ; the pastrycook's boy 



68 BREAKFAST IN BED; OE5 

doesn't care mucli for jam-tarts ; the tailor's son 
is reluctant to assume the shears and French 
chalk of Mr. Snip, his papa, deceased. But Ma- 
yor is not to be banished from polite society be- 
cause Malmesbury frowns. 

I hope that, ere very long, at least a dozen 
Spelling-books may be added to the libraries of 
the Senior and Junior United Service, the 
Guards, and the Army and ISTavy Clubs. They 
need not entirely supersede the study of the 
'' Racing Calendar," or " Euff 's Guide to the 
Turf ;" but they may be instrumental in spread- 
ing a mild and innocent love for the contempla- 
tion of words in two syllables, and eventually 
cause " Turf scandals " — if the Turf must be 
scandalous ; a quality I do not hold to be 'at all 
necessary to a noble and manly national pur- 
suit — to turn on some other topic than the ortho- 
graphy of Eeindeer as against Eaindeer. 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEIT THE SHEETS. 69 



OK THE PREVAILING MADNESS. 

Feom all that I can see, or hear, or am told, 
and from a little, perhaps, that I feel, I am in- 
clined to apprehend that there is a good deal of 
Madness going about the world just now. If 
Sir Baldwin Leighton's Night Poaching Act is 
definitively to put down the unlicensed capture 
of feathered and furry game (which it will no 
more do than it will enable me to marry my 
grandmother), it should surely have contained a 
clause to warrant the shutting up, under the cer- 
tificate of two physicians, of all the hares next 
March ; for if they catch the epidemic which is 
raging among humanity, the chances are that 
they will go very mad indeed. This is most de- 
cidedly a mad world, my masters. Don't you 
think the Americans have gone mad, and that '' a 
dark house and a whip" would be the fittest 
treatment for the delirium which has driven a 
mighty nation into the perpetration of political 
bankruptcy ? They must be mad, only they have 
duplicity enough not to howl or tear their flesh, 
or scrabble at the gate (as King David did when 
hQ feigned madness), until they have withdrawn 



70 BREAKFAST IK BED ; OR, 

themselves from public obseryation. In one of 
Mr. Dickens's earlier works there is a terrific tale 
of a lunatic, who so kept the secret of his in- 
sanity for very many years. He slew his wife, 
and raved finely to himself when alone ; but as 
he wore a white neckcloth, talked about the wea- 
ther, and lent money at interest in polite society, 
he was accounted perfectly sane ; until, as ill 
luck would have it, it occurred to him to brain 
his brother-in-law with a chair, and to avow, in 
a succession of short yelps, that he was raving 
m,ad ; whereupon his relatives had out a commis- 
sion De Limatico against him, and locked him 
up, incontinent. It is a dangerous matter to 
meddle with your brother-in-law. As a rule, 
your father-in-law is merely a harmless bore, who 
borrows money from you, and in quiet confi- 
dence imparts to his friends the opinion that you 
never were quite the sort of fellow for his Emily ; 
but your Jjeau-frere has got his mother'^s Mood 
in him j and the children of the horseleech are 
younger and stronger than their parent. I knew 
a man of rare talent once, who went out of his 
mind ; whereupon quoth a cynical friend of his : 

" What a confounded fool X must be ! It's 

just like his indiscretion to go blurting out what 
nobody wanted to know. Tve leen madder than 
he for years ; but I always took good care not to 
let anybody know it." How would it be if some 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 71 

eapient physician suddenly discovered that all 
those exterminating patriots in America yonder 
were mad, — that " Uncle Abe" had only ninety- 
nine cents out of the mental dollar ; that there 
was a tile off Mr. Seward ; that Mr. Chase was a 
gone 'coon ? The New Orleans Dayoust-Haynau, 
Butler, may have been suffering, throughout, 
from cerebral congestion ; and the wretch M'N'eil, 
at the time of the Palmyra massacres, was, per- 
chance, quite an unaccountable being. You 
know the gist of Dr. Forbes Winslow's teaching. 
The people at home, who govern me by making 
me think that I govern them, have carefully put 
away Dr. Ws. big book ; which, if a man be at 
all nervous, he is apt to consult as frequently as 
though it were a kind of psychical looking-glass. 
A stumble or a stutter, inability to chip your egg 
in the proper manner, over drowsiness or over 
wide-awakedness, dimness of sight, or swimming 
in the head, or carillons in the ears, may all be 
so many symptoms of morbid diseases of the 
brain and mind. ' If you feel any one of th^se 
symptoms, the best thing you can do is to buy a 
strait-waistcoat, and go off at once to Dr. Forbes 
Winslow, lest worse should ensue. This is the 
key-stone of the Winslowian philosophy. 

But what would the learned Doctor think of 
the cerebral condition of the Distracted States ? 
Is Dixie's Land a whit saner than Columbia? 



72 BREAKFAST m BED; OB, 

One ot my newspapers this morning tells me 
that the dark gentleman who had formerly the 
honor of driving the President of Secessia's car- 
riage is jtist now in England, and is lecturing 
about among the pious folks with as profitable 
results to himself, I hope, as those hinted at by 
Mr. George Borrow in his " Wild "Wales." What 
says Jefferson Davis's quondam slave of his mas- 
ter ? Is the Confederate Dictator a hero to his 
body-coachman ? The ex- Jehu declares that Jeff. 
"isn't of much account." When things go 
smoothly, he is pleasant and placable enough ; 
but when their course is roughened, he storms 
and goes on the rampage in the " skeariest" man- 
ner. I dare say that he is as mad as all the rest 
of the world. 

When his Lordship of Dundreary is unable to 
discern the drift of a particular observation, he 
forthwith puts down the speaker as a lunatic. 
Why should not his Lordship be right — or any 
other " fellah ?" I dare say that Mr. Sothern (if 
he condescended to read the first number of 
"Breakfast in Bed") thought me as mad as a 
hatter for presuming to question the perfection 
of his impersonation. For my part, I have a 
firm persuasion of the lunacy of the people who 
grow ecstatic about Dundreary, or who sip their 
grog while the great Olmar, or the greater 
Leotard, or the greatest Blondin may be capering 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 73 

over their heads, at the immment risk of tumb- 
ling down and smashing the skulls both of spec- 
tators and acrobats. I think that to take Drury 
Lane Theatre — if you have any money to lose — 
is a sign of mental alienation so decided, that the 
mere act of signing the agreement should be a 
full warrant for the friends of the manager tak- 
ing care of him. I think half the people who 
are quaking with terror through fear of garotters, 
and cutting their trembling fingers with the 
bowie-knives they don't know how to handle — I 
speak with authority in this matter, for I have 
been garotted, and it didn't hurt me — are mad. 

I am sure the garotters are mad ; poor, pur- 
blind, darkened, demented creatures, running 
their heads against IsTewgate granite walls as a 
bull runs at a gate. I don't think that Sir 
Joshua Jebb is quite right in his mind when he 
countersigns a ticket-of-leave ; and I have little 
doubt but that if a commission sat upon Sir 
"Walter Crofton, they would discover that he was 
subject to delusions. The question is, I t^ke it, 
less to find out who is mad than w^ho isn't mad. 
Do you mean to tell me there is not a screw 
loose -in the brainpan of those Greeks who are 
persisting in electing the candidate who won't 
stand, and in carting about, on the top of an om- 
nibus, as though it were the Golden Calf or an 
image o^ Juggernaut, the portrait of a Young 

4 



74 BREAKFAST IN BED; OR, 

Middy of whom they know nothing ? And that 
fine old Tory, the King of Prussia 



! 

When the drill-sergeant monarch makes a 
speech to a loyal deputation from Kalbsfleisch- 
stein on the necessity of governing " outside the 
constitution/^ don't yon think him as crazf^^as 
his ancestor who used to cane his son Fritz and 
throw plates and dishes at his daughter Wilhel- 
mina ; or as his brother deceased, who was wont 
to wash his poor wandering head in Vermicelli 
soup ? And the illustrious historian of the Ho- 
henzoUerns I Is all quite right at Chelsea, think 
you, when Great Tom booms forth peals of praise 
over tyranny and brutality, and makes a demi- 
god of the beery and brutal old bludgeon-man 
and crockery-breaker, with his Tabaks-Collegium, 
and other tomfooleries ? 

When Lady Caroline Lamb (herself as de- 
mented as Madge Wildfire) first met Lord 
Byron, she made this entry against his name in 
her diary : " Mad, bad, and dangerous to know.'^ 
Lady Morgan, who tells the story, and whose 
bald and frivolous tittle-tattle has just been pub- 
lished under the auspices of Mr. Hep worth 
Dixon as an " Autobiography " — shade of " P.P., 
clerk of this parish," has it come to this ? — was 
mad with vanity and Radical politics. 

A mad generation will eagerly read all the 
antiquated gossip and scaumag of I)ubli|i Castle 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN- THE SHEETS. 75 

during the mad yiceroyalty of the Duke of 
Eichmond (who is said to have knighted a link- 
man between claret and coffee one night), and 
w^ill chuckle over the eccentricities of the epoch 
when the ladies of the Irish Court — titled ladies 
— used to play at the pastoral game of " Cutcha- 
kachoo," which consisted in squatting down on 
the carpet with your hands clasped underneath 
your hams, and changing places with your 
partner as rapidly as was possible in that abnor- 
mal position. And Prince Puckler Muskau, 
whom Lady Morgan's friends used to call Prince 
Pickle Mustard, and who, being desirous of 
attending a banquet of the " Friends of Free- 
dom," wanted to know if the health of his High 
Dutchship would be proposed, and if his right 
to precedence as an " Altezza," or Highness, 
would be recognized — what are we to think of 
him ? The Friends of Freedom didn't want the 
" Altezza " at their dinner imder any circum- 
stances, and Sir Charles Morgan told him so ; 
whereupon my lady fell into an agony of alarm 
lest the Prince should insist on fighting a duel 
with her husband. 

All the people in Lady Morgan's book (which 
will be forgotten the day after to-morrow) seem 
to be more or less bereft of their senses — from 
good-natured old Lady Cork, who used to pilfer 
small articles from the shop-counters where she 



T6 BREAKFAST IK BED! OE, 

dealt — of whom I have read, but not in this 
" Autobiography " — to John Kemble the tra- 
gedian, who once meeting the '' wild Irish girl," 
(afterwards Sidney Lady Morgan^ at an evening- 
party, twined his fingers in her curly black 
locks, and said, in a voice husky with port-wine : 
'' Little girl, where did you get j'-our wig from ?" 
Stay, there is one personage in the "Auto- 
biography " v^'ho really seems to have possessed 
some sense. He was a poet, and bored the 
authoress of " The Book of the Boudoir " to get 
some of his effusions published ; and on her 
civilly declining to do so, wrote a second letter 
back, to say that he was also a practical boot 
and shoe maker, and that he would be very 
grateful to my Lady if she would use her influ- 
ence with Sir Charles Morgan to get him an 
order for a pair of boots. 

" St. Hierom," says Burton, " out of a strong 
imagination, conceived within himself that he 
then saw them dancing in Rome ; and if thou 
shalt either conceive or climb up to see, thou 
shalt soon perceive that all the world is mad ; 
that it is melancholy, dozes ; that it is (which 
Epichthonius Cosmopolites expressed not many 
years since in a map) made like a fool's head 
(with that motto, Caput helleboro dignum)^ a 
crazed head; cavea stultorum^ a fool's para- 
dise; or, as Apollonius, a common prison of 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEElSr THE SHEETS. 77 

gulls, cheaters, flatterers, etc., and needs to bo 
reformed.'' This is a nice perspective. " For 
who, indeed," pursues this agreeable moralist, 
''is not a fool, melancholy, mad? Who is not 
brain-sick? Tolly, Melancholy, Madness, are 
but one disease." Indeed ! " Delirium is a 
common name to all. Alexander, Gordonins, 
Jason, Pratensis, Guianerius, Montaltus {Con- 
naissez-vous ces gens-ld ?)^ confound them as 
differing magis et minus ; so doth David (Psalm 
xxvii. 5) ; and 'twas an old Stoical paradox, 
O'mnes st'ultos insanire — all fools are mad, though 
some madder than others. Who is not a fool, 
or free from Melancholia ?" Answer, O Hypo- 
chondriac, Breakfast in Bed ! '^ Who is not 
touched more or less in habit or disposition ? 
What is sickness, as Gregory Tholosanus defines 
it " (I wish he lived in Saville Eow, and would 
give me an audience between 10 and 1 a.m.), 
" but a dissolution or perturbation of the bodily 
league which health combines ?" As for the 
philosophers, they are all, according to the ana- 
tomist, as mad as the illiterate. Lactantius, in 
his Book of Wisdom (can I get it at Mu die's ?), 
proves them to be dizzards, fools, and madmen, 
so full of absurd and ridiculous tenets and brain- 
sick positions (In their critiques on the Penta- 
teuch and elsewhere), that to his thinking, never 
any old woman or sick person doted worse. 



78 BEEAKFAST m BED ; OR, 

Democritus took all from Leucippns, and left, 
saitli he, the inheritance of his folly to Epicurus ; 
which, all spiteful as it was, w^as never so mad a 
bequest as that of old Mr. Hartley of Southamp- 
ton, who left a hundred thousand pounds to 
build a house for a collection of air-pumps and 
old bones ; and out of which bequest the lawyers 
have carefully clutched forty thousand pounds 
for costs of litigation. Plato, Aristippus, and 
the rest were (according to Lactantius) all idiots ; 
and there was no diiference between them and 
beasts, save that they could speak. Theodoret 
evinces the same of Socrates. Aristophanes calls 
him ambitious; his master, Aristotle, scurra 
atticus / Zeno, an enemy to all arts and sciences ; 
Athenius, an opinionative ass, a cavalier, and 
pedant ; Theod. Cyrensis, an atheist and pot- 
companion, and a very madman in his actions. 
Bravo, Lactantius! But, dear me, haven't I 
been aware of Lactantius in modern London? 
Surely he must be the man who edits the '' Cads' 
Chronicle." 

If you desire to hear m.ore about Apollonius, a 
great wise man, and Julian the Apostate's model 
author, I refer you to the learned tract of Euse- 
bius against Hierocles. / never read it, but 
Hircius knows it by heart. You w^ill find therein 
that the actions of the philosophers were prodi- 
gious, absurd, ridiculous, and their books and 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS 79 

elaborate treatises full of dotage ; that their lives 
were opposite to their words ; that, they com- 
mended poverty in others, and were most greedy 
and covetous themselves ; that they extolled love 
and peace, and yet persecuted one another with 
virulent hate and malice. But enough of this 
histoire de tout le monde. If I continue, it will 
be thought that I am attempting an essay on the 
History of CiviliEatiom 

It is by this time, I hope, satisfactorily settled 
that you, I, and the majority of mankind are 
cracked. A famous physician has not hesitated 
to propound such a theory in a public court of 
justice ; and are we, poor ignorant laymen, to set 
ourselves against the Eoyal College of Pall Mall 
East ? Were we not all edified the other day 
when the poor, meek, placable, ill-used, long- 
suffering wife of a desperate crockery-dealer in. 
Tottenham Court Road~a " dangerous lunatic," 
whose horrible hallucinations, springing from 
^* drink and gay company," ending in his daring 
to protest against the unhappy, persecuted crea- 
tiire, who had been his wedded (and outraged) 
wife for eight-and-twenty years, indulging in such 
harmless eccentricities as running up scores with 
tallymen, pawning his pots and pans, bringing 
crowds round his shop, and heaping mountains 
of Billingsgate on his head— were we not all 
profoundly struck with the perspicuity of the 



80 BEEAKFAST m BED; OR, 

Law of Lunacy, and the ample guarantees afforded 
by the Constitution for the liberty of the subject, 
when poor Mrs. Crockery got, by a process as 
easy as lying, a medical certificate, empowering 
fher to lock up her wicked, wicked husband 
(crazed by drink and gay company) in a mad- 
house ? It is true that an obtuse jury, misled by the 
Jesuitical oratory of Mr. Montague Chambers, and 
the illogical summing-up of an incompetent judge 
(who ever heard before of this Alexander James 
Cockburn, Lord Chief Justice of England ?) came 
subsequently to the conclusion that the naughty 
crockery-dealer wasn't mad ; that his wife hadn't 
any right to lock him up ; and that the medical 
gentleman had made rather a blunder in certify- 
ing to his insanity ; but what was that manifestly 
erroneous verdict, or even the hundred and fifty 
pounds damages which accompanied it. compared 
with the public revelation of the great principle, 
that a lady who does not love her lord may, after 
twenty-eight years of married life, pop him into 
a strait-jacket, and have him clapped up in Bed- 
lam ? No ; not in Bedlam. I retract. Li that 
admirable and mercifully-conducted Institution, 
honorable alike to the Corporation of London 
and to the wise and good physicians who watch 
over its unhappy inmates (one good man and 
true, Dr. Charles Hood, has just been succeeded 
by another as true and as good, Dr. Helps), a 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN- THE SHEETS. 81 

case such as that of the crockery-dealer's would 
be impossible. There is but one man in the 
lunatic wards of Bedlam who is sane (E. O.,, pot- 
boy, 1840), and he must needs lie in hold during 
"her Majesty's pleasure;" for has he not com- 
mitted the unpardonable sin on earth ? 

So long as there are physicians simple enough 
to be gulled by the tales of untamable shrews, 
or careless enough to grant certificates of insanity 
without proper inquiry, so long our better halves 
will have a terrible weapon in their hands. This 
awful power, which is to be exercised apparently 
by those who have the longest tongues and the 
greatest faculty for plausible representation, 
should serve to keep us men-folks in order. 
" Take heed of the axe," cried King Charles on 
the scaffold, when a gohemouche was sillily hand- 
ling the instrument of death. Take heed of the 
mufflers and the padded room, O you Bluebeard 
husbands. 'Not only " drink and gay company," 
but bad temper, bad language, tearing down 
wall-paper, objecting to doctors prying about the 
house, may all be construed into symptoms of 
raging madness. I intend to be very careful, in 
future, as to the criticisms I pass upon the com- 
ponent parts of my Breakfast in Bed. IsTot a 
word about the eggs, about the musty, musty 
bacon, about the weakness of the tea, the leatheii- 
nees of the toast^ the absolute absence of the 

4* 



82 BREAKFAST IN BED ; OR, 

muffins ! 'No ebullitions of passion at the tardy 
response to the ofteii-tugged bell ; no raging or 
roaring because the newspapers have not arrived ! 
In olden time, a birchen rod was hung up in the 
best-regulated nurseries, to frighten the little 
masters and misses into propriety. In imagina- 
tion, now, a strait-waistcoat occupies the place on 
the wall opposite my pillow, erst filled by the 
martyrology ; and once a week, when I open my 
^' Punch," I expect to find that Mr. Shirley Brooks 
has made an end of all the bickerino^s of the 
N'aggletons by the deportation of Mr. IS'aggleton 
to Munster House, at the requisition of Mrs. N.^ 
backed by a certificate from Peter Grievous. 
What delightful domestic dialogues are those 
which take place between the N'aggletons ! How 
infinitely superior to " Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lec- 
tures !" Douglas Jerrold (a sadly over-rated man, 
my love) had no knowledge of the world, no wit, 
no humor, no insight into character, no loving 
tenderness for the foibles of humanity. In the 
" Caudle Lectures " he could only show us a vul- 
gar, quick-tempered, aggravating, but thoroughly 
good-hearted woman, who scolded her husband 
frequently, but loved him dearly. Caudle and 
his wife used to wrangle and make it up again ; 
and, as times go, I dare say were as happy a 
couple as could be found between Camberwell 
and Chelsea 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEI^ THE SHJEETS. 83 

But a new prophet has arisen, A marvellous 
painter of manners comes forward to show us a 
sarcastic, sullen man, half-hyena, half-bear, caged 
with a tigress of a woman. They abuse one 
another, they bandy cruel epithets, they hate 
each other ; and I have little doubt that, but for 
the commendable reticence of the narrator, we 
could be informed that Mrs, If aggleton throws 
knives at Mr. l!^ aggleton, and that Mr. iKT. boxes 
Mrs. IT.'s ears. 

This is charming. I like to read " The l^aggle- 
tons " in bed. Their dialogues add a zest to my 
bread and butter. I call them Mustard and 
Cresswell. I had yet to learn that the lives led 
by the affluent middle-classes in England 
were of a nature akin to those which one 
might suppose to be led by the Devils of the 
Pit ; nagging, nagging, jeering, and snarling for 
ever and ever. I am thankful that I don't 
belong to the affluent middle-classes, but to the 
" lower middle ones ;" and I am pretty well, I 
thank you. 

Of course the IsTaggletons are mad — ^as clearly 
off their heads as that, poor ambassador w^ho, the 
other night, at Rome, walked in his night-gown 
into a dining-room full of royal and noble com- 
pany, demanded in tones of fury to know what 
the Prince and Princesses were doing there, and 
ordered them to decamp. 



84' BREAKFAST IN BED; OE, 

By the wav, didn't John Hunter, the famous 
snrgeon, once do something of the same kind ? 
Didn't he come home weary and faint from dis- 
secting or lecturing, and find that his wife 
had convened a large company for a " quiet 
evening and a little music ;" whereat cried 
honest John, '^ Turn all these catamarans out 
of the house, and bring me my night-gown and 
slippers !" 

Imagine how the Yolscians were fluttered; 
how the scrapers and tinklers levanted ; how 
spinet, harpsichord, theorbo, and viol di gamba 
were hushed ; how the " catamarans " retreated, 
darting withering looks at this uncivil old saw- 
bones. " A brute of a husband," was this most 
humane, enlightened, and upright man most pro- 
bably pronounced; and I only wonder that Mrs. 
Hunter didn't have him seized on the spot for a 
maniac. For he was mad, of course. 

Thns, then, having arrived at this comfortable 
conclusion, I lay down the newspapers edited 
by mad journalists, and ere I ring the bell for 
Crazy Jane the servant to bring up hot water — 
the mad barber who is to shave my head isn't 
come yet — I ponder in my darkened mind as to 
who the sane people on this harum-scarum ball 
may be. 

Do your duty in your state of life, work hard, 
live temperately, fare coarsely, give of your store 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 85 

to the poor, fear God, honor the Queen, and 
train up your children in the way they should 
go ; and Dr. A. may want to feel your pulse and 
inspect your tongue ; Dr. B. tap his forehead, 
and, looking at you, murmur, " Something 
wrong there ;" Dr. 0. ask you how many legs a 
sheep has ; and Dr. D. consign you, by certifi- 
cate, to a madhouse. 

The only way in which I can discern the pos- 
sibility of establishing sanity is to be a dullard 
and a fool. Then, all the doctors will swear 
that you are not only in your senses, but a very 
wise man ; and you may hope in time to be 
made a E.G., or Governor-General of the For- 
tunate Islands. "Who knows what eminence we 
may be hoisted to by the time we begin to 
drivel ? 

My people won't let me read Dr. Forbes 
Winslow's big book ; but I got, long ago, the 
opening paragraph by heart, and they cannot 
rob me of that. 'Tis a quintette of wise apho- 
risms by- Hippocrates, in Greek — ^I forbear to 
quote the Attic, in mercy to the compositors and 
the critics — and runs -thus : " Life is short ; Art, 
long; the Occasion fleeting; Experience falla- 
cious ; Judgment difficult." From which I per- 
pend: young Mr. Wyndham, George Francis 
Train, Captain Atcherly, Mrs. Cottle, Monsieur 
Veuillot, and Billy Barlow, are all sane ; but 



86 BREAKFAST IN BED ; OE, 

Joseph Garibaldi, Michael Faraday, John Stuart 
Mill, and Victor Hugo, are as mad as the Man 
in the Moon ; — and we don't know anything at 
all about it. 



I»HlLOSOPHr BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 87 



OK THEN"GS GOING, GOENTG— GONE ! 

What will they pull down, root up, cut 
through, or trample upon next ? I asked myself 
yesterday, throwing down the newspaper on the 
counterpane. It isn't alone our old institutions. 
They have gone by the board long ago, of 
course. It isn't alone the framework of society 
or the guarantees of morality. Of course, they 
have all disappeared since the Reform Bill was 
passed, and the Eleventh of George the Second 
enacted that law-pleadings were to be drawn no 
more in Latin, and the Test and Corporation 
Acts were abolished. But the .terrible thing is 
in this pulling down London about our ears. 
Here am I, tranquilly Breakfasting in Bed this 
morning; but how do I know but that the 
ground-landlord is not hungering to make a 
tabula rasa of a quiet street of Russell Square, 
and build a row of staring shops or bran new 
banking-houses in lieu of the present row of 
dingy middle-class mansions, in one of which a 
discontented scribbler, with a deranged liver, is 
gnawing dry toast in bed ? Up and down the 
weary columns of the paper do mine eyes travel, 



88 BEEAKFAST IN BED; OE, 

and their way is throngli a desert of demoli- 
tions with, scarcely an oasis of stability. Un- 
derground Railway, forsooth ! Thames Embank- 
ment, quotha ! Main Drainage, save the mark ! 
Strand Hotel, Adelphi Hotel, Charing-Cross 
Hotel — hotels everywhere and anywhere, and a 
murrain to them ! JSTew streets built, old streets 
swept away. Where are w^e all going to ? Why 
can't they leave things as they are ? 

To keep " things as they are " is understood 
to be one of the chief maxims of that great 
Conservative Teaction popular among that very 
numerous class who, having got on in the world 
and made their fortunes by repeated changes 
and innovations, are anxious for an era of immu- 
table rest, in order that they may keep what 
they have acquired. I don't wonder at the kind 
of contemptuous pity with which politicians 
speak of '' an ancient Whig." Is there not, 
indeed, something very nearly approaching 
senility in professing Liberal oi)inions when you. 
have gotten your desire — a title, a gold stick, a 
commissionership of excise, a county-court judge- 
ship, or something else nice and comfortable, 
worth a thousand a year and upwards? Radi- 
calism, Liberalism, are all very well to chalk 
your shoes with as you climb up the rungs of the 
ladder ; but, the top one attained, there is nothing 
like a boot of good strong Conservative leather 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 89 

to kick the ladder and the people clinging to it 
down, withal. 

Next to keeping things as they are, the favor- 
ite doctrine of your genuine true-blue Reaction- 
ists is, to restore " things as they used to he." 
I declare that it is quite refreshing to watch 
the phases of the mania for restoration : from 
illuminating, to " the old art of tatting ;" from 
the hoop-petticoats of 1745, and tlie round hats 
of 1813, to stained-glass windows i nd old Saxon 
fonts and columniated pulpits, irreverently 
called ^'parson coolers." Let us patch up the 
old churches, chapter-houses, guest-halls, and 
rood-screens, by all means. There is nothing 
new under the sun ; and it may be, " things as 
they used to was" are infinitely preferable to 
things as they are. "We have gone back to Hes- 
sian boots. Why shouldn't we revert to cocked 
hats and pigtails ? 

The English language, as at present written, 
or, as the Danish journalist lately described it, 
" the rich and sweet and mighty largely latinized 
Scandinavian dialect," is denounced by sapient 
critics as a mass of affectations and euphemisms. 

Let us return, O my literary brethren, to the 
" sounding Saxon" of our ancestors, as written 
by Sir John Cheke in his version of St. Matthew's 
Gospel, or talk JSTorse with Dr. Dasent. Restore 
the old; scoff at the new. Stare ^er antiquas 



90 BREAKFAST IN BED; OK, 

vias should be onr motto. Old clothes are the 
only wear. I hear that old Madeira is much 
asked for ; only, as the wine in question has be- 
come almost as rare as a black tulip or a blue 
diamond, the cunning wine-merchants are com- 
pelled to minister to the public demand for an- 
tiquity by fabricating old Madeira from ISTew 
South African. 

Pray mark how eagerly the newspapers give 
insertion to the arguments put forward by the 
advocates for the fine old methods of treating 
criminals. Hurrah for the jolly old gallows, the 
fine old cat-o'-nine- tails, and the noble pillory, 
the stocks, the ducking-stool, and the jougs ! I 
yet live in hopes to see a garotter flogged at the 
cart's-tail from Langham Place to the Duke of 
York's Column. 

I have a friend who wants all the ticket-of- 
leave men hanged. "Why not ? — why not break 
them on the wheel, burn, or fry, or flay them 
alive ? They used to do so in the good old times. 
And what a pestilent, meddling, prying Radical 
of a fellow was that Jack Howard — a plague on 
all philanthropists, say I — who found out that if 
felons' gaols were not made clean and airy and 
wholesome, and if that terrible doom, depriva- 
tion of the liberty of going whither a man wills^ 
were not compensated for by wholesome and regu- 
lar food, prisons would become the filthiest of 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 91 

Augean stables, with fine old fevers and agues 
careering about, for tbe benefit of so many wild 
beasts and so many maniacs. 

The worst of the matter is, that with all your 
mending, restoring, and preserving labors, things 
wonH keep as they are, and obstinately refuse to 
return to that which they used to be. 'Tis like 
an old hat that has been "molokered," or ironed 
and greased into a simulacrum of its pristine 
freshness ; or an old coat that has been black- 
and-blue revivered. For a day or two all is 
well, and the daw may strut about in his pea- 
cock's feathers, the envy of the entire farm-yard ; 
but the first shower of rain washes ofi' the ficti- 
tious gloss, and scrubs the w^hitening off the se- 
pulchre, and exposes all the senility and shabbi- 
ness of the sham. 

You may bring the corpse of Antiquity to 
Surgeons' Hall, and galvanize its stark limbs into 
a hideous semblance of vitality ; but the spark 
once fled, not all the Ley den jars in the world 
shall make that mass of dead dough sentient. 
Better macerate the flesh from off the bones, and 
hang up the skeleton in a museum, ere it crum- 
bles into the dust from which it came. You see 
that, in a \oi.ij rostrum, high up above us all, 
and our miserable sphere of power, there is a 
certain Great Auctioneer, w^ho uses now his 
Bcythe, and now his hour-glass, for a hammer; 



92 BREAKFAST IN BED ; OR5 

and lie — whose name is Time — ^brings all things 
human to public Roup, and sells them by inch 
of corpse-candle. For ever does he from his 
clattering jaw cry, '^ Going, going — gone!" 

" Going, going !" — :put money in thy purse, — 
tick your catalogue with pencil-marks, — bid with 
wild haste, — fee agents and brokers, — catch the 
auctioneer's eye till it coruscates with nods and 
winks, when — thump ! — down goes the hammer 
on the pulpit-ledge, and you find that the thing 
for which your desire lay and your soul was 
adrought is gone for ever. Gone w^hither, it is 
bootless, now, to inquire. 

I hold it for certain that few persons ever went 
to a sale to buy a certain thing, and were per- 
mitted to purchase precisely the article they 
longed for. Something is knocked down to them, 
— and dear is the price it has been run up to — 
but it is not the particular object. And so it is 
always. You get a wife, but not the wife. You 
are made Chief- Justice at Timbuctoo, not Attor- 
ney-General at the Cameroons ; and it is all one 
in the end. 

" Going, going — gone !" London is going even 
while I pen these lines — going in despite of topo- 
graphical Conservatives who wish to keep things 
as they are, and archaeological revivalists who 
strive to resuscitate things as they used to be. 

"Westminster Hall is itself, and more than 



PHILOSOPHY :BETWEE]Sr THE SHEET8. 93 

itself again ; and "William Rufus might wag liis 
shock red head with Joy to look npon its won- 
drous roof, brave painted window, noble dais, 
and towering brass candelabra ; St. Stephen's has 
cloisters once more, and, nnderground, its crypt 
has been cleared out ; all over the metropolis we 
hear of churches being restored, Lady-chapels 
revivified, and palaces renovated. 

The reverse to this flattering medal is in the 
pig-headed determination evinced in some quar- 
ters to keep the bad old things — the filthy streets, 
the bulging rotten tenements, the haunts of fel- 
ons and vagrants, the abominable old nuisances 
and obstructions— as they are. Eight years ago 
I strove hard, in a journal called ^'Household 
Words," and in an essay entitled '' Gibbet Street," 
to miake the respectable classes aware of what a 
hideous, pestilential, fever, thief, and beggar in- 
fested place was Charles Street, Drury Lane ; and 
how it was a hot-bed and forcing-house for the 
hulks and the scaffold. 

I remark that recently "S. G. O.," in the 
" Times," has been sailing (in the wind of indif- 
ference's teeth) on the same tack, and, under the 
generic'^term of "Guilt Gardens," has exposed 
the misery and the shame of these places. Yet 
do I fear that Charles Street, Drury Lane, and 
its congeners, will outlive both Lord Sidney Go- 
dolphin Osborne and his humble protest 



94 BEEAKFAST IN BED ; OK, 

I have not yet heard anything about pulling 
down the Coal Yard, Church Lane, St. Giles's, or 
Dudley Street, or those most scandalous little ar- 
teries injected with the worst of human blood 
that stagnate and fester, varicose in their vaga- 
bondism, about Gray'-s Inn Lane. And Middle 
Kow, Holborn ? and Clement's Lane, Strand ? 
and the cloaca of Clare Market ? and the Colon- 
nade behind Guildford Street, Eussell Square ? 
These frightful dens yet exist, yet flourish in rank 
luxuriance ; and any number of vested interests 
would shrink with indignant affright were it pro- 
posed to pull them down. Proposed ! 

In my mind's eye I can see a phlegmatic-look- 
ing gentleman, in a well buttoned frock-coat, 
Bmoking his cigarette in his cabinet de travail at 
the Tuileries, and, as he emits curling threads of 
blue vapor, or twists his spiky moustache, going 
over a map of Paris ; then placing his imperial 
finger on a labyrinth of slums, he says sharply to 
Baron Haussmann, " M. U Prefet^ otez moi ce 
tas d^immondices'^'' — sweep me all this rubbish 
away before the name of Kobinson (hight Jack) 
can be thrice pronounced. But, then, my friend, 
I should not like to give up my Habeas Corjpus^ 
and my right to good and substantial bail — with 
sundry other trifles light as air in the way of 
liberty— for the sake of getting rid of the Coal 
Yard or Middle Eow, 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 95 

Tlie transformation of London, of which the 
commencement may be dated from the attain- 
ment of his majority by the Prince of Wales, will 
be necessarily slow and gradual ; for we have no 
Prefects of the Thames — our municipal autho- 
rities are more retrogressive than progressive, 
and it would be easier, I take it, to obtain a 
grant of City money for furbishing up the Lord 
Mayor's coach, or replacing the rotten portals of 
Temple Bar, than for laying out Smithfield as a 
Park, or sweeping away the nasty purlieus of 
Finsbury. 

Yet even within the charmed circle wherein 
William the King, six hundred years ago, told 
William the Bishop and Godfrey the Portreve 
that all citizens should be law- worthy, and all 
children be their father's heirs after their father's 
days — even within the domains of Gog and 
Magog, there are numerous signs of a " Going, 
going — ^gone r era. 

Temple Bar, it is true, stands as fast as the 
barber's on one side and the banking-house on the 
other can make it ; but Chancery Lane has been 
widened, and handsome edifices substituted for 
the queer, tumble-down, albeit picturesque old 
tenements, of which the only records now are 
the etchings of John Thomas Smith. 

Messrs. Adams and Ede the robe-makers, Par- 
tridge and Cozens the stationers, and the London 



96 BEEAKFAST IN BED ; OR, 

Restaurant, have given a very diiferent aspect to 
the Fleet Street corners of the Lane^ — -which, how- 
ever, becomes antique enough as you progress 
northward, the fat, legal spiders interlacing their 
webs from Lincoln's Inn to Clifford and Sergeant's 
Inn — and to hives of chambers yet consecrated to 
dirt and dust and dry rot, the concoction of de- 
murrers, and the spinning of special pleas. 

Is there not likewise Symond's Inn, that back- 
yard of the law, that wretched little cour des 
miracles of twentieth-rate legal practitioners, 
where dubious articled clerks borrow admitted 
attorneys' names to grace their dusky panels, and 
the writ with which you are served by Spinks is 
issued in the name of Jinks ? Who is the phantom 
Jinks^ — this stalking-horse, this parchment aegis of 
the unqualified pettifogger, this plastron of Tidd's 
practice — is he alive or dead ? Does he call for 
the rent of his name regularly ? Does he look in 
at Symond's Inn from time to time, to see how 
hip double is getting on ? Does the appellation 
he lets out on hire belong really to the fiend, like 
Peter Schlemil's shadow ? Some of these days, 
Symond's — the least known, perhaps, of all the 
obscure Inns of Chancery — must go by the board ; 
and it is, even now, an anachronism. I always 
fancy it the haunt of the last professors of the art 
of forestalling, regrating, and common barratry ; 
of old-world lawyers, who yet sue by mesne pro- 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEK THE SHEETS. 97 

cess, the Eleventh of George the Second -notwith- 
standing, draw pleadmgs in Latin, and frame 
answers in J^orman-French. 

I always look for the names of John Doe or 
Richard Eoe on the door-jambs ; or expect to 
find Jolm a' Nokes arguing in the centre of the 
court-yard with John a' Styles on the vexed 
question of the pied horses and the horses that 
were pied. 

But hie we through the bar again,; or better 
still, thread one of those astounding mazes of 
dirty lanes, full of chandlers' shops, bookstalls, 
law-writers, beggars, marine stores, fried-fish, and 
furniture brokers, that lie between Carey Street 
and Clare Market. Glance at the filthy bye 
streets which recall the famous names of Denzil 
Holies, of the Earl of Clare, of the Duchess of 
Newcastle. Struggle down, as well as you can 
for costermongers' barrows and sprawling child- 
ren, past Wych Street, and ere you come into 
the Strandj^ and to Holywell Street, look to the 
gaping space to the left. That Sahara of rubbish, 
girt by a fringe of crumbling brickwork, was 
once Lyon's Inn. 

^' On the subject of Lyon's Inn," writes Ire- 
land, '' all historians remain silent." I wonder 
that the distinguished papa of the Shakesperian 
forger, and who was himself by no means remark- 
able for veracity, did not think it worth his while 

5 



98 BREAKFAST m BED ; OR, 

to fill up the historic vacuum which he laments, 
by means of a few lies. When Sam Ireland, 
senior, visited Lyon's Inn in the first year of the 
present century, he found the Hall (which was 
built in 1700) destitute of any circumstance to 
recommend it save its extreme filth, and opines 
that the use of mops and brooms was totally un- 
known to the principal and ancients of this honor- 
able society. A brood of chickens was tranquilly 
roosting on the haut pas^ and an old hen was 
laying down the law to an attentive audience of 
cobwebs. 

And yet this inconceivably dingy and decayed 
old place had been, according to the steward's 
account, an Inn of Chancery since the days of 
Henry Y. I can imagine Sir John Falstafi* lodg- 
ing there, and being dunned for the rent of his 
chambers when Mrs. Quickly declined to afford 
him any more accommodation on trust at the 
Boar's Head, Ireland gives an etching of it, 
which may be found in his " History of the Inns 
of Court." It was in truth a very kennel, a cave 
of Adullam, whither repaired all that were in 
debt and all that were discontented. I wonder 
that it was not converted into a furniture bazaar, 
for from year's end to year's end the brokers were 
always " in " some one or .other of the chambers ; 
as for the tenants, those who were not bankrupt- 
were profligate — ^there was always somebody 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 99 

down witli low fever, and always somebody else 
Tip witli delirium tremens. Lyon's Inn, as to its 
occnpancy, was a receiving-house for the Insol- 
vent Debtors' Court, and an ante-chamber to 
Whitecross Street. Still had the unlovely little 
place \i^ fasti — not very pleasant, but memorable 
ones nevertheless. Is it not recorded by Lock- 
hart, in his ballad on the Gill's Hill Lane murder, 
that the victim's name was " Mr. William 
"Weare," and that he '^ dwelt in Lyon's Inn"? 
Yes ; in one of those mouldy sets of chambers 
lived the disreputable sharper and '^ mace man," 
who was only thwarted in his scheme to plunder 
three rogues by the three rogues aforesaid laying 
a plot, more cunning, more desperate, and more 
successful, for plundering him. The booty was 
a wretched one — not a tithe of what they ex- 
pected ; but Mr. Jack Thurtell — who I am given 
to understand was a rollicking boon companion, 
and only second as a convivial vocalist to his ad- 
mired associate Mr. Hunt — was a gentleman who 
would have meal if he could not get malt, and in 
default of either, blood ; so that, in default of 
spoil, he very punctually murdered Mr. "William 
Weare. 

That Lyon's Inn should have any connection 
with the First Napoleon may, at the first blush, 
appear strange and improbable. In a visit of 
the present Euler of France in the old days, 



J 00 BEEAKFAST IN BED; OR5 

when lie was " Prince Bonyparty," the needy 
adventurer, to whom wiseacres would scarcely 
allow any wits to live upon, there would have 
been little out of the way. He might have gone 
to Lyon's Inn to get a little bill done, or to pay 
the interest on one that was overdue. But l^a- 
poleon the Great, Emperor and King and Pro- 
tector of the Confederation of the Rhine ! what 
could he have had to do w^ith the shady little 
Inn nestling in the purlieus of the Strand? 
Thus much : John "Wilson Croker, the late 
Secretary to the Admiralty, literary squidfish of 
the " Quarterly Review," and friend of the 
Marquis of Hertford, in his celebrated endeavor 
to whitewash Sir Hudson Lowe, blacken the 
memory of Napoleon, and squelch Barry 
O'Meara, tells (Oct. 1822) a suflBciently curious 
storj, setting forth how, a short time before his 
(O^Meara-s) departure from St. Helena, a ship 
arrived from England, having on board a box 
of French books and a letter addressed to a Mr. 
Fowler, the partner of Mr. Balcombe, Buona- 
parte's purveyor. Mr. Fowler, on opening the 
letter, found that it contained nothing but an 
enclosure addressed to James Forhes^ Esq, As 
he knew no James Forbes, he thought it his 
duty to carry the letter to the Governor ; fur- 
ther inquiries ascertained that there was no per- 
son of the name of James Forbes on the Island ; 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEl!T THE SHEETS. 101 

and accordingly it was thought proper to open 
this mystei^ious letter before the Governor and 
Council, when it was found to begin with the 
words ''Dear O'Meara;" it was dated Lyo7i^s 
Inn^ London^ and signed William Holmes, And 
to think that Mr. Y/illiam Holmes may be yet 
alive, while I am Breakfasting in Bed ! 'Tis bnt 
forty years since ; Mr. Holmes may have begnn 
business early. Who shall say but that the 
placid, white-haired old gentleman I saw yester- 
day contemplating the ruins of Lyon's Inn was 
Mr. William Holmes, come to a green old age, 
and serenely unmindful of the dark, tempestuous 
time when he was the occult agent of the Captive 
of St. Helena, when he wrote : '' I expect to hear 
from my friends at Eome and Munich, of which 
you shall have due information?" Rome and 
Munich were then the residence of the banished 
princes and princesses of the Imperial family, of 
Eugene Beauharnais and Cardinal Fesch. 

Again writes the sibylline Holmes: '^The 
100,000 francs, lent in 1816, are paid ; likewise the 
72,000 francs, which complete the 395,000 francs 
mentioned on the 15th March. The 36,000 francs 
for 1817, and the like sum for 1819, have also been 
paid by the person ordered. Remain quiet as to 
the funds placed ; the farmers are good, and tliey 
will pay bills for the amount of the income, which 
must be calculated at the rate of four per cent." 



102 BEEAKFAST IIST BED ; OR, 

" Going, going — gone !" "William Holmes may- 
have been an old, old man, ere lie was trusted 
with the secrets of the ITapoleonic finance, and' 
may have slept the last sleep these thirty years. 
He and his mysteries, and the Inn he transacted 
his business in, all fade away into a mass of 
crumbling rubbish, to be carted away, leaving 
no vestige behind. 

And Exeter 'Change — not the 'Change of Pid- 
eock and Crosse, and poor Chnnee the Elephant, 
but the more modern structure — the lamentable 
arcade where none but crazy or impecunious 
tenants could be found for the dingy little dens 
of shops : of that, too, must be written j^'^'z^. And 
Hungerford Market, with Mr. Gatti's ice-shop ! 
The Market is gone, and the Bridge likewise. 
The adage is reversed, and the fish has become 
fleshified. 

There : I have no heart to read abont any more 
metropolitan improvements. The London of the 
past, the London of my youth, the London in 
which I can remember the dancing bear and the 
camel with the monkey on his back, the climbing 
boys and the small-coal man, Padlock House, 
and Cranbourn Alley, Chalk Farm and the Holy 
Land, the Borough Mint and George the Fourth's 
statue at King's Cross, the Mews and Cotton Gar- 
den, the Quadrant Colonnade and the Thatched 
House Tavern — this London has disappeared for 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEK THE SHEETS. 103 

ever. 'What next, I wonder ? Is Temple Bar to 
suffer the common lot? Does any bold icono- 
clast contemplate the removal of Middle Eow ? 
Is the integrity of St. Martin's Workhonse 
threatened ? Or will it occur to an innovating 
Duke of Bedford that Eussell Square, laid out 
as a public pleasure-garden, and surrounded by 
handsome mansions and hotels, with shops and 
cafes on the basement, might be made one of the 
most magnificent jpZa^^«9 in Europe % "Who knows ? 
Meanwhile I turn on my pillow, and, taking 
up the supplement to the "Times," observe with 
grim satisfaction that a twenty-one years' lease 
of a house in Golden Square is to be sold. Aha ! 
that choice resort of the dinginesses and the 
second-handisms is safe for nearly a quarter of a 
century. It will last my time, and the worms 
will be Breakfasting on me, in my Bed, ere the 
sepulchral cry of " Going, going — gone !" is 
heard over Golden Square ! 



104: BBEAKFAST IN BED; OE, 



• OIT BEING BUKNT ALIYE. 

We liave all of us^ I deferentially infer, dreamt 
some strange and curious and horrible things in 
our time — not necessarily after a supper of un- 
der-done pork-chopSj but often under calm* and 
placid outward circumstances, which one might 
naturally assume to be conducive to the most 
balmily-tranquil slumbers. I went to-bed the 
other night, with nothing particular on my con- 
science, and after no ccenal meal heavier than 
three pills. I woke up in the gray of the morn- 
ing in an agony of terror, for I had dreamt that 
I was Burnt Alive. 

Not merely condemned to the stake or deliv- 
ered over to the secular arm. No, no, no ! ] 
was actually and corporally (in my dream) con- 
sumed by Fire. A fearsome thing ! 

In that heterogeneous medley of humor, buf 
foonery, eloquence, poetry, pathos, Scotch ego- 
tism and conceit, blind Toryism, abstract Repub- 
licanism, wit, gluttony, scurrility, philosophy, 
and drunkenness, the . " Noctes Ambrosianse,'' 
Professor Wilson makes the Ettrick Shepherd 
relate his experience, in a dream, of the gallows. 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 105 

Mr. Timothy Tickler expresses his opinion that 
to dream of being hiiiigcd is a luxury ; but the 
Shepherd sees nothing at all luxurious in it. 

"It's the warst job of a'," says the mythical 
James Hbgg, " and gars my very sowl sicken wi' 
horror for sake o' the puir deevils that's really 
hang'd out and out, hondjide^ wi' a tangible tow, 
and a hangman that's mair than a mere appari- 
tion ; a pardoned felon, wi' creeshy second-hand 
corduroy breeks, and coat short at the cuffs, sae 
that his thick hairy wrists are ^visible when he's 
adjustin' the halter; hair red, red, yet no sae red 
as his bleared een, glarin' wi' an unaccountable 
fierceness." 

This is undeniably graphic, but too imagina- 
tive. The Shepherd had evidently never come 
in contact with the real hangman — the demure, 
highly respectable, Methodist-parson-looking 
man, who executes with quiet docorum the dread 
mandate of the law, and turns you off gingerly, 
for fear of spoiling your clothes, which he is go- 
ing to sell to Madame Tussaud for the Chamber 
of Horrors. 

Mr. Hogg, however, was not satisfied with be- 
ing hanged. It occurred to him to dream that 
he was beheaded. The ceremony took place on 
a scaffold, forty feet high, " a' hung wi' black 
cloth, and open to a' airts." The headsman was 
" sax feet and some inches " high. He stood " wi' 

5* 



106 BREAKFAST IK BED ; OE5 

an axe over his shoulder, and his twa naked arms 
o' a fearsome thickness, a' crawlin' wi' sinews, like 
a yard o' cable to the sheet-anchor o' a man-o'- 
war." The executioner, it appears, turned squeam- 
ish over the task of cutting Mr. Hogg's head off. 
" The axe fell out o' his hauns, and, bein' sharp, 
its ain wecht drav' it quiverin' into the block, and 
close to my ear ; the verra senseless wood gied a 
groan. I louped up on to my feet. 1 cried wi' 
a loud voice, ' Countrymen, 1 stand here for the 
sacred cause of Liberty all over the world.' .... 
I might have escaped ; but I was resolved to 
cement the cause with my martyred blood. I 
was not a man to disappoint the people. They 
had come thereto see me die" — not James Hogg 
the Ettrick Shepherd, but Hogg the Liberator 
— ^' and from my blood, I felt assured, would 
arise millions of armed men, under whose tread 
would sink the thrones of ancient dynasties, and 
whose hand would unfurl to all the winds the 
standard of Freedom, never again to encircle the 
staff till its dreadful rustling had quailed the 
kings— even as the moimtain sough sends down 
upon their knees whole herds of cattle, ei e rat- 
tles from summit to summit the elulting music 
of the thunder-storm." 

This is very fine and grand, and piles up the 
agony with a vengeance ; but still I don't be- 
lieve very strongly that worthy James Hogg ever 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 107 

had sucli a dream or dreams. The narrative was 
probably written by the eloquent Professor Wil- 
son, not when '' aiblins fou " at Mr. Ambrose's 
in Picardy Place, but with calm deliberation in 
his own study. As a rule, you may make cer- 
tain that the circumstances under which cele- 
brated literary exercitations are said to have 
been composed are not those which actually oc- 
curred*; and, equally as a rule, you may rest 
satisfied that the scenes and characters most ela- 
borately drawn and most minutely filled up are 
those with which the author^as had the slightest 
personal acquaintance. 

For all that, I really am Breakfasting in Bed 
this morning, and I positively did dream last 
night that I was being Burnt Alive. 

It was terrible. I really felt the crackling 
agony of the flames. Schoolboys often dream of 
being flogged ; but the bodily is not commensu- 
rate with the mental pain, and the shadowy pe- 
dagogue's blows fall lightly as those of a bladder 
filled with peas. I have dreamt of being de- 
voured by wild beasts, but always woke as they 
were beginning to crunch my bones, and before 
they got to the marrow ; of drowning ; of suflTo- 
cation by charcoal ; and especially of ieing bu- 
ried alive. Arrah ! that horrible hot atmosphere 
of the coffin, and the grave-clothes that swaddle 
and hamper you as you kick for freedom, and 



108 BREAKFAST IN BED ; OB, 

the dreadful pressure of the coffin-lid on your 
nose ; while all the while you are visually con- 
scious of the gravedigger smoking a pipe and 
drinking cold rum-and-water with your mother- 
in-law in the parlor of the Half-Moon and Seven 
Stars, the third house to the left round the cor- 
ner as you leave the cemetery ! 

" He wa'n't of much account," says the grave- 
digger, burying his nose in the rum-and-water. 

" He was a black-hearted villain," adds your 
mother-in-law, filling her second pipe. 

What a disturb^ce the old lady used to make 
if you ventured on a mild havanna in the back 
drawing-room! And then you begin kicking 
again in your shroud and cerements, and — ^you 
wake! 

I didn't wake for hours, so it seemed — ^for 
hours, for weeks, for months, for years, for cen- 
turies — while I was being burnt alive. The In- 
quisition did it all, of course. "In half an hour 
from the first spark the hills glowed with fire un- 
extinguishable by a waterspout. The crackle 
became a glow, as acre after acre joined the 
flames. Here and there a rock stood in the way, 
and the burning waves broke against it, till the 
crowning birch- tree took fire, and its leaves, like 
a shower of flaming diamonds, were in a minute 
consumed." Well, it wasn't like that. "Mil 
lions and millions of sparks of fire in heaven, but 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 109 

only some six or seven stars. How calm the 
large lustre of Hesperus !" Certainly ; only Hes- 
perus didn't sliine when I was burnt alive. Not 
only sparks, but stars, whole constellations, with 
any number of suns, moons, and comets to boot, 
danced before my eyes. Not only my body, but 
my brain was on fire. I was bound to the stake, 
or the bedpost, or something of that sort. I 
think that at one stage of my agony I was a Hin- 
doo widow in the performance of the rite of 
fiuttee, with plenty of flax and fresh butter to 
keep me blazing, and a Brahmin gentleman, with 
a fine yellow streak of caste on his forehead^ to 
assure me of eternal felicity immediately after my 
reduction to a cinder. Then I was transformed 
into a cat, and an enormous gorilla held me tight 
in one hairy arrii, while with the otlier he guided 
my unwilling paw to sweep some chestnuts off a 
red-hot hob. Then, of course, in the usual man- 
ner of digressional dreaming, I ran off at several 
tangents, and became Sir Edwin Landseer, M. 
Paul de Chaillu, and the late Mr. Douglas Jer- 
rold's comedy of " The Cat's-paw ;" but I was 
still burning, and so continued to burn, till 
I could feel and writhe no longer — when I 
awoke. 

It is a gruesome thing to have undergone these 
torments even in a dream. Deja/ Prince Tal- 
leyrand might have remarked, had I subjected 



110 BREAKFAST IN BED ; OEj 

my fiery feelings to the most obvious and most 
usual degree of comparison. 

Of course I know what it all arose from. It 
wasn't indigestion. It wasn't liver. It wasn't 
determination of blood to the head ; and I don't 
think it was conscience. 'Twas merely the inco- 
herent embodiment of an imagination excited by 
the perusal of those dreadful accounts of young 
girls being burnt alive, of which we have had 
lately a melancholy succession. I had been read- 
ing about the catastrophe at Nice ; about the 
grim tragedy of the transformation-scene at the 
Princess's Theatre ; about the accident in Harley 
Street; about Doctor Lankester, the coroner, and 
his indignant philippics against crinoline. I had 
gone to bed with my head full of the poor suf- 
ferers who had been burnt alive, and sleep had 
knitted up the ravelled skein of preoccupation 
into a dire fabric of disasters to myself. 

One has but to glance from column to column 
of the papers to breakfast — if you forswear sup- 
ping — full of horrors. Burnt alive! Burnt 
alive ! Burnt alive ! the catalogue goes on in 
lurid iteration. The poor have woes enough of 
their own, God knows ; but this is an anguish 
of which the rich, so far from being exempt, seem 
the chosen and particular victims. 

Youth and beauty, carriages and horses, live- 
ried servants, rank, brave gai*ments, lip-service, 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. Ill 

and homage, shall not wrest Lady Clara Yere de 
Vere from the clutch of the Fire Demon. Let 
her paint an inch thick, and to the complexion 
of charred and greasy ashes she comes — comes 
through insensate vanity and recklessness. The 
music of the ball is yet rippling in soft waves of 
sound through her ears ; the sugared compli- 
ments of her cavaliers still, half-melted, leave a 
dulcet velvet-pile on her lips ; she is spreading 
'^ut the radiant finery in which she has fluttered 
through the festivah Poor little ephemeral fash- 
ion-gnat ! The flounces and furbelows which 
have made so many men enthusiastic, so many 
women jealous, still rustle round her, diaphanous 
and fluent, when all is changed to a dreadful flare 
and crackling. Like Facinata in her burning 
tomb, she writhes in a shroud of flame. The mili- 
ner's handiwork is beaten into powder by the 
Cinder Fiend. There is nothing left but scorched 
and naked limbs. 

And when the Fire comes, reprehending no 
vanity, placing his brand of interdict on no pre- 
posterous frenzy of fashion, but dipping his finger 
into the family wine-cup and setting it fiaming, 
starting up from the cozy hearth, leaping like a 
treacherous beast of blood from out the bars of 
the grate — how is it then ? When we were chil- 
dren, we used to nickname the live cinders that 
fell from the fire, to the imminent peril of the 



113 BEEAKFAST IN BED ; OR, 

heartli-rug, '' purses " or " coffins." The first, 
when cold and shaken, had a pleasant money- 
jingling sound. The last had an ugly longitudi- 
nal form ; and the morbid-minded among us de- 
clared we could discern on the surface ominous 
little specks and spots, that were at once assumed 
to represent a coffin-plate and nails. 

Those leaping biers are grimly common just 
now. They disdain to smoulder in the woollen 
rug before the hearth. Their favorit.e resting- 
place is in the gauzy folds of the lady's dress. 
The coffins gape, they have grown into sepul- 
chres, and folly falls into them. 

I said the rich seemed marked out specially for 
such torment. Ah, vain and presumptuous as- 
sertion ! Ah, crudest of dogmatisms ! Who is 
exempt from aught ? That workhouse pauper is 
a martyr to the same lumbago which makes rigid 
the loins of the million-rich banker. The Fire 
may oftentimes seem spitefully faithful to afflu- 
ence, as though he said, " Aha ! I will show them 
that money-bags shall not avail against live coals. 
Oho ! I will prove that my furnace has a red- 
der hue than Burke's Peerage. Ai ! ai ! I will 
teach them to have balls, and banquets, and junk- 
etings." But he comes back at last to the stern, 
impartial rule ; and he who is own brother to Death 
proclaims himself, like Death, mighty and just. 
Question not the equity of the Fire King's die- 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 113 

pensation. All lie toticlies witli red-liot sceptre : 
yon, and me, and all the world. "Who of us, in 
liis calendar of griefs, cannot re(?all some horrible 
red-letter days? 

When this old hat was new, it was encircled 
by a crape ; and for whom worn ? — tlie little, 
little kinsman, with his dark eyes, and merry 
laugh, and bright face, that made ns remember, 
half-joyfully, half-tearfully, the lineaments of the 
dear dead that^had gone before him. And he 
was playing before the fire in the npper room, 
when, with that cruel carelessness which makes 
us almost think, some girls to be fiends, the ser- 
vant had left him — ^left him on some idle chatter- 
ing errand. And his pinafore caught fire ; and 
there was an inquest — a grave judicial investiga- 
tion — on that poor little morsel of humanity. 
And — look you here, my brother. If we were 
all to mourn for ever and aye, and to refuse to 
be comforted, and to parade our grief before all 
the world, do you think this same world could 
go on? Do you think that He, whose wisest 
creature told us that "joy cometh in the morn- 
ing," would not have cause to cast us away as 
selfish and ungrateful? 

We read in the Book to which Dr. Cocker- 
Colenso has taken so many arithmetical objec- 
tions, that when the child tliat Uriah's wife bare 
to David was stricken with, sickness, the king be- 



114 BEEAKFAST m BED ; OR, 

sought God for the child, and fasted, and went 
in and lay all night upon the earth, refusing to 
eat bread, or to be raised up by the elders of his 
house ; when on the seventh day tlie child died, 
and his servants feared to tell him. He never- 
theless discovered, from their scared looks, that 
the little one was lost ; and then '' arose fro'in 
the earthy and washed and anointed himself^ and 
changed his afparel^ and came into the house of 
the Lord' and worshipped : then he came to his 
own house / and when he required^ they set hread 
hefore him^ and he did eat ;''^ answering, when 
his servants marvelled at the strange change in 
his behavior, ^' While the child was yet alive^ I 
fasted and wept ; for I said^ Who can tell 
whether God will he gracious to me^ that the child . 
m.ay live ? But now he is dead^ wherefore should 
I fast ? Can Ih^ing him bach again f I shall 
go to him ; tut he shall not return to meP 

These awful accidents by fire, which, with ter- 
rible similarity of occurrence, have made us all 
tremble and stand amazed, have, through that 
odd yet usual propensity of \hQ English people 
for imitating the procedure of a bull running at 
a gate, been laid at the door of crinoline. If 
ladies did not persist in wearing exaggerated 
hoop-petticoats, urged the Bull-Run philoso- 
phers, there- would be no catastrophes from fire. 

I don't think such nonsense was ever talked 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 115 

out of Bedlam ; yet you find plenty of people, 
ordinarily supposed to be sensible and even sa- 
gacious, who join in this parrot-cry. 'Tis on a 
par, for common sense, with the silly dogmatists 
among the " practical" penal philosophers, who 
are for having all criminals, whatsoever may be 
their offence, star\^ed, flogged, and w^orked in 
chain-gangs, merely because their own coward- 
ice and avarice have been aroused and alarmed 
by the street-outrages of a couple of score garot- 
ters. I am not about to cry up crinoline. I am 
not favored with the acquaintance of any manu- 
facturers of steel-springs and horsehair petticoats, 
and have no wish to puff the dealers in such arti- 
cles. ' JSTor am I disposed to deny that unduly 
•bulging skirts have been the cause of numerous 
acciaents by fire or othervvise. But do you think 
that young, middle-agea, or old ladies would 
cease to be burnt alive if petticoats were reduced 
to the circumference in fashion forty years ago, 
when a lady's dress fell in a perpendicular line 
close to her limbs from hip to ankle ; when the 
gown was, in fact, but " a pantaloon on one leg ?" 
Bah ! dilated crinoline is a nuisance to men, and 
makes some women very ridiculous; but the 
real root of the evil in fire-casualties is not crin- 
oline. 

When ironmongers abandon the abominable 
practice of building fashionable grates, of which 



116 BREAKFAST IK BED; OR, 

the topmost bars are scarcely half a foot from the 
ground, and which present an ever-yawning fiery 
fm^nace, from which immaculate virtue would 
scarcely have saved Shadrach, JVIeshach, and 
Abednego ; when masters of families sternly in- 
sist upon every grate in every room being per- 
manently protected by Mdre-gnards ; and w^hen, 
above all, mothers of families exert their author- 
ity to prohibit their daughters w^earing sleezy 
gauze and muslin dresses in winter time — we 
may look for a surcease of suttee in drawing- 
rooms and parlors. I say this last is a matter 
which concerns Mater-famiiias, and her alone. I 
suppose the British mother has still some power 
left, notwithstanding the very fast manners of 
the rising generation. I don't v/ant any cruelty, 
oppression, tyranny, to carry out the gauze- 
and-muslin taboo. I only call for a calm and 
determined expression of maternal will. 

When the unsophisticated old lady from Ken- 
tucky first saw some I^ew York young ladies 
indulging in the vagaries of the valse d^ deux 
temps^ she very uncompromisingly stated how she 
would treat her daughters if they betook them- 
selves to such Terpsichorean gambadoes. " I'd 
give 'em the hickory," this Spartan parent ex- 
claimed, '' if they were as big as Goliath and as 
old as Methusalem." "We know what equally 
rigid discipline was prescribed by one of the in- 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 117 

terlocutors in George Colman's '^ ITiglit-gov/n 
and Slippers*^ for boarding-school misses wlio ad- 
dicted themselves to the pernicions practice of 
novel-reading. Well, we don't want such a 
Brownrigge system of procedure as this. Only 
let Mamma say to her daughters, '^My dears, 
you sha'n't be burnt alive, if I can help it ; and 
therefore I won't allow you to wear gauze, tarla- 
tans, or muslins in w^inter-time.'' 

As for crinoline itself, I am afraid that prohi- 
■ bitions, satiric, nay fierce, denunciations, will, for 
a time, be powerless against it. The ladies, old 
as well as young, have nailed their crinoline to 
the mast ; and, if they are determined to M^ear a 
certain thing, who sRall gainsay them ? Tlio 
-Duke of Tantivy's daughters wear top-boots,— 
tops, madam ; maboganies ; hottes a revers / 
"pickle-jars," — ^precisely as you choose to em- 
ploy one or the other more or less euphuistic (I 
mean slangy) locution. These fair pilasters, 
wdiose sire is a pillar of the state, enclose tlieir 
slender shafts and pediments in the leathern 
coverings of wliich the use is ordinarily supposed 
to be confined to fox-hunters, post-boys, and 
farmers of the old school. I have it on author- 
ity. There is not the slightest compromise in the 
Duke's daughters' tops. They are not gaiters. 
They are not Balmorals prolonged upwardly to 
preternatural proportions. 



118 BREAKFAST liS" BED ; OK, ^ 

My informant is acquainted with, the Crispin 
employed to manufacture these articles for the 
Duke's daughters. Any fine afternoon during 
the full Brighton season you may see these young 
patricians, with their governess,* Mdlle. de Cuir- 
bouilli, on the sea-highway between the Battery 
(or where, at least, the Battery used, and the new 
hotel is, to be) and Pool Yalley. If the wind be 
indulging in even the smallest pufis of his char- 
tered libertinism (and he is scarcely ever on 
thoroughly good behavior at Brighton), the 
demurest eye must glance perforce at the shining 
tops I allude to, pharoses, so to speak, in the 
surocino; sea of crinoline.. This is a wonderful 
age, and we are a wonderful people, and the 
Eiver Amazon nas astounding tributaries in our 
country. 

"When I laid out my annual half-a-crown last 
Christmas — and the outlay is one I trust to be 
permitted the indulgence of for some years to 
come — in the purchase of "Punch's Pocket- 
Book," and surveyed Mr. John Leech's panora- 
mic etching of " Sea-side Fashions for 1863," — 
and when I came upon the group of the fox- 
hunting-looking belles, in orthodox " pink," lea- 
thers, boots, and v\'hips, — I could scarcely help 
exclaiming, " IVIr. Leech, Mr. Leech, this is not 
character but caricature. This is a madness of 
the pencil, a frenzy of the etching-needle, the 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 119 

hallucination of a humorous draughtsman, em- 
bracing his chimera/' But, behold, January was 
yet young, and Nature had hardly manifested 
her abhorrence for the vacuum caused by the 
abstraction of the above-mentioned half-a-crown 
from my pocket, when, on undeniable authority, 
I was told that the Leechian cartoon was the 
graven embodiment, not of a myth, but of a 
literal truth, and that the Duke of Tantivy's 
daughters really wore top-boots. 

And why not ? This is a free country. Sump- 
tuary laws have been abolished for ever so many 
centuries. Where is the use of having a Habeas 
Corpus, if portions of the feminine corporate 
body are not to be thrust with impunity into 
such boots as caprice may suggest, or conve- 
nience dictate, or fashion warrant ? I see ladies 
driving in the Park in paletots made by Poole. 
Our wives are ceasing to employ mantle-makers, 
and beginning to order their coats from their 
husbands' tailors ; this ingenious contrivance 
having a double purpose — that of increasing 
your own sartorial accounts, and of giving the 
dear creatures an opportunity for spending on 
other finery the ready money which, either by 
passionate entreaty or gentle coercion, they will 
extract from you, w^hether coats or mantles, hats 
or bonnets, are the wear. 

Why not? I repeat. Some years since, our 



120 BEEAKFAST IN BED; OB5 

charniers used to wear shaggy pilot-jackets, with 
mother-o'-pearl buttons of alarming circumfer- 
ence, into the pockets of ^fhich (the jackets, not 
the buttons) they were wont to thrust their tiny 
hands. Don't you remember, again, the waist- 
coat mania among the ladies — when they dis- 
^covered that long gold chains were utterly use- 
less, and had, consequently, to be provided with 
Albert or brequet guards — including, of course, 
a quantity of " charms " — to secure their watches 
in their side-pockets ? What kind of habiliments 
did Queen Christina of Sweden patronise ? Why, 
she dressed like a grenadier. And Joan of Arc ? 
Why, she wore corslet and greaves^ gauntlets and 
surcoat, like a man-at-arms. To be sure they 
burnt her alive (or are said to have done so, for 
many French archaeologists maintain that Joan 
lived to a good old age) for wearing too much 
crinoline — or plate-armor. 

I have read in the autobiography of the Czarina 
Catherine IL, that her predecessor, Elizabeth, 
when a fat, passee dame, very unwieldy, and very 
fond (too fond) of champagne, was addicted to 
appearing at the court balls en cavalier ; that is 
to say, in a tightly-fitting hussar uniform. A 
squabby, elderly woman in tights is neither a 
very edifying nor a very delectable spectacle ; 
but who was to question the so«vereign will and 
pleasure of Elizabeth, the Supreme Empress of 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 12l 

all the Eussias, Great DucTiess of Moscow, Pro* 
tectress of the Eepublic of N"oYgorod, and so 
forth ? The fashions vary, and the ladies please 
themselves. Vive la mode — et la hagatelle ! 

Who shall say that Semiramis didn't wear top- 
boots ; and that l^inns, that celebrated prototype 
of the hen-peckecl husband, was not county- 
courted for the account by the Eunciman of the 
period ? More than a hundred years ago the 
beautiful Miss Gunnings were the reigning " sen- 
sational" toasts in London; and they appeared 
at the drums and routs of the nobility and gen- 
try attired, or unattired, in the manner of which 
the female artistes attached to i\\Q poses plastiques 
have now, without rivalry, a monopoly. 

A great French painter once told me that the 
wrinkled, snuffy old woman who swept out his 
studio was gazing one day upon a picture on his 
easel, representing Yenus {costume en chair ^ buff 
trimmings) rising from the sea. "Ah," she mur- 
mured, ^'les heaiix jours ! on se montrait ainsi^ 
quasi-nue^ an del ^ lieinf Moi aitssi fai pose 
dans le temps ^ She had filled the part (for a 
gratuity of ten francs nine sols) of Goddess of 
Eeason in Maximilian Eobespierre's famous Bed- 
lamite pageant, and had been drawn on a tri- 
umphal car through the streets of unbelieving 
Paris. " What costume did you wear ?" asked 
the painter. ''Dam! queg^ chose comm^ ca^^ 

6 



12.2 BEEAKFAST IN BED; OB, 

("something like that"), replied the snuffy old 
sweeper, pointing to the Yenns with nothing to 
wear. Ton see, it was the fashion of those Re- 
publican times. The French, in liberty, equality, 
fraternity, and other things, outstripped all their 
contemporaries. 

There is a queer story about the Empress Jose- 
phine, when she was the citoyenne Beauharnais, 
going to a ball at Madame Tallien's in a full suit 
of fleshings, and nothing'else besides a translucid 
and spangled scarf. It was the fashion. The 
greatest proficients in made-dishes in the world 
began to dress aio natztrel. In 1848 there was a 
brief feverish attempt to revive the Goddess-of- 
Eeason modes ; and M. Cham de Noe, I recol- 
lect, gave the '^ Charivari" a humorous sketch, 
depicting the Commissary of Police presenting 
a blooming young-lady candidate for the office 
of coryphee at the approaching festival with her 
official costume. It was a fig-leaf. 

I am inclined, then, to think, on the whole, 
that we men-folks talk a great deal of nonsense 
in our denunciations of crinoline. It is certain 
that ladies were burnt to death centuries before 
crinoline was ever heard of; to say nothing of 
accidents by fire during the periods when hoop- 
petticoats were in abeyance. It is equally cer- 
tain that the victims to fire-casualties are not the 
wearers of silk or wooUen-stufi* over crinoline ; 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 123 

but those silly women, young and old, who, 
through meanness or through yanity, persist in 
wearing their widely-distended framework with 
muslins and tarlatans in lieu of stouter fabrics. 
But the crinoline itself, accepting it as the gene- 
ric term for hencoops either of horsehair, steel- 
springs, wire-gauze, cane, or basket-work, I hold 
to be harmless. The ladies declare it to be emi- 
nently pleasant and convenient. The physicians 
say that it is healthy. There used to be no more 
painful sight in the streets on rainy days than 
the ladies holding up their flaccid, drooping, 
splashed, and draggled coats, in a vain attempt 
to protect them from the mud-lava and the fresh- 
ets of the gutter. I suppose ladies are as liable 
as others folks to rheumatic aff*ections of the 
limbs, through damp garments clinging to them. 
I apprehend, the rather, that from this very 
cause, thousands of hapless w^omen have suffered 
year after year excruciating agonies, of which 
we, coarse, selfi h, exi2;eiit5 intolerant men have 
never recked. The ladies have a habit of squeal- 
ing out about trifles, and s ying nothing about 
real ailments, whicli last t^:ey endnre with heroic 
fortitude and resi nati n. Ah, me ! how often 
the ch ek is quivering underneath the violet 
powder ! How often the blooming English belle 
is undergoing th^ anguish of an Indian at the 
stake ! 



124 BREAKFAST IK BED; ORj 

The lady who wrote in Queen Anne's time to 
the editor of the " Spectator/' and asked hinij 
with crushing curtness, what business petticoats 
were of his, denied, d pr{o7''i^ the right of the 
ruder sex to meddle in the criticism of feminine 
costume at all. Indeed, I question whether we 
have any right to discuss those articles of cos- 
tume which we merely see / but we are entitled 
to say a word or two in praise or dispraise of 
those we really feel. For example, when the 
Sheriff of Middlesex comes down upon us, d2:)rO' 
fos of Madam's point-lace, parasols, double- 
width glaces^ and innumerable bonnets. We 
feel that. 

Again : when our shins are in a state of per- 
manent ecchymosis, from the bobbing and rasp- 
ing of watch-spring crinolines there against, every 
time we walk with the adored one of our heart 
down Eegent Street. We feel that^ don't we ? 
And when we are stifled in omnibuses, or hustled 
out of our stall at the theatre, or put to the peine 
forte et dure at dinner-tables, the inconvenience 
we suffer becomes to a certain extent palpable 
and tangible. Kot long ago, in the wilds of 
Yorkshire, I went to church one Sunday morn- 
ing with a charming family of young ladies, of 
w^hose worthy papa I was the unworthy guest. 
(Please not to insert this in the "N"ewYork 
Eavesdropper," to the intent of my^ being brand- 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 125 

ed six months afterwards, in the columns of the 
" Asafoetida Eeview," as a dastardly betrayer of 
the secrets of the Lares and Penates.) The 
church was open, you see, to everybody, although 
I went in the family-pew ; and ninety-nine Iitm- 
dredths of the females among the congregation 
wore crinoline. A nice time I had of it. My 
four fellow- worshippers made as many " cheeses " 
of crinoline around me. There was no way out 
of it. Oh, for Lord Ebury to have shortened 
this one particular morning service ! There was 
so much distended whalebone about me, that I 
felt myself off the coast of Greenland; a mere 
tub, thrown out for young whales. I could a't 
move ; I couldn't feel my hassock or my pocket- 
handkerchief. It was a continual uprising and 
down-plumping of crinoline. I was a miserable 
man. The sermon was an excellent one ; but I 
couldn't hear it. The singing vv\as unusually 
good, for a country church ; but it grated on my 
ears. I shall never forget the agony of that ex- 
perience of the Litany under the influence of ex- 
aggerated crinoline. I could enlarge on my 
w^oes ; but desist, for fear of being Spurgeon- 
esque. Hircius, who is most orthodox, and v^as 
a church-rate martyr in 1836, just before he was 
bankrupt in the corn-and-coal line, would be 
shocked at my profanity ; and Spungius, who 
married a pew-opener when the secularist cheese^ 



126 BREAKFAST IN -BED ; OB, 

monger's widow had thrown him over, would 
never forgive me. 

But, granting the aches and pains, pecuniary 
and personal, which may afflict the descendants 
of Adam through the addictedness to preposter- 
ous skirts of the daughters of Eve, I say boldly 
that the old garments of the ladies were quite 
as productive of mental and physical discomforts 
to us and to themselves. How about the frocks 
of 1830, worn high up above the ankles ? How 
about the monstrous ladies' hats, that knocked 
our own off, and took up all the room inside the 
Brighton " Highflyer ?" Discourse unto me, I 
pray thee, concerning those hideous bishop and 
leg-o'-mutton sleeves, forever flapped on our 
faces, or dabbled in the gravy at dinner. Con- 
jure up again the shawls you were always called 
upon to pin behind, the sandal shoe-strings 
that were always becoming untied ; to say no- 
thing — well, there can be no harm in mention- 
ing it. 

Every gentleman whose wife has not kept a 
lady's maid has been called upon, in the old time, 
to lace a lady's corset. In Haydn's song a young 
lady is desired by her mamma to " lace her bod- 
dice blue" herself; but in married life Benedict 
used to be, with perfect propriety, called upon 
to perform that cheerful oflice. I say, used to 
be ; for the days of stay-tyranny are happily gone 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 127 

by. Man J ladies have abandoned the nse of cor- 
sets altogether ; while, for those who still adhere 
to these adjuncts to feminine symmetry, cunning 
Parisian corsetieres ha,ve devised on anatomico- 
phy siologicorhygienic principles, na,tty little struc- 
tureSj of elastic nature, which are hooked-and- 
eyed, or buttoned or strapped, and slipped on and 
oif, w^ith the extremest comfort and despatclie 
Benedict is not called upon to lace Beatrice's 
stays nowc Let us be joyfuL Young English 
ladies used to kill themselves in the attempt to 
have wasp-waists. Dreadful stories used to be 
told of English mothers forcing their daughters 
to wear suffocating, chest-compressing, rib-crush- 
ing stays, by night and by day, or strapping them 
up to the bedpost, to get a better purchase while 
they laced them. And how hideous, after all, 
were the hour-glass bodices, the wasp-waists? 
A very famous English artist made the other day, 
I am told, par faiitaisie^ a drawing of the Venus 
de Medicis as she stands in Florence — " to en- 
chant the world'' — and the Yenus in stays and 
crinoline. Under the last-named aspect she 
looked frightful. Hogarth tried an analogous 
experiment in one of his prints ; and you may 
see a Yenus in a hoop in the background of the 
picture of " Modern Polite Conversation." 

Every schoolgirl knows that the rage for hoops, 
panierSy or marquises^ as they were distinctly 



128 BEEAKFAST IN BED ; OE, 

called, was quite as fierce a century and a half 
ago as in our own time. The ladies' brocaded 
sacks were quite as ample, if not ampler, than 
our own moire antiques. 

^- But just dwell for a moment on the very long 
duration of the huge-skirt mode. Hoops in some 
form or another lasted from the time of Queen 
Anne to the middle of the reign of George the 
Third — for at least seventy years. And don't sup- 
pose that crinoline in good Queen Anne's time was 
quite a new thing. The portraits of Titian and 
Parmegiano show that the dames of the middle 
asres understood to its verv base the secret of ex- 
uberant skirts. Look at Zucchero's picture of 
Queen Elizabeth, and consider the kirtles and 
farthingales of her maids-of-honor, all stuffed and 
bombasted out with silk and wadding. Crino- 
line in some guise or another will endure, I am 
afraid, for years after I have been measured for 
my last surtout — elm, plain, richly studded with 
japanned nails — and skirts will be worn a la — ■ 
Halloa! what's that? Silence that dreadful 
bell ! I know it too well ; and the dubious fe- 
male party with the mysterious parcel (shaped 
and pinned as no other parcel on earth is pinned 
and shaped), who glides upstairs and looks at me 
askance, as a creature to be loathed and scorned 
until it is time for him to pay a certain little bill. 
Thank goodness, I am safe in Bed, and at Break* 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEIST THE SHEETS. 129 

fast-time slie cannot bHght me with her baleful 
glances. Skirts are worn d la Enination ; and 
that confounded ring at the bell must be from 
Somebody's Dressmaker. . 



i6* 



130 BREAKFAST IN BED ; OE, 



0]^ THE CONDITIOlSr OF MY POOE FEET, 

" Joseph," once said a wise man, who had just 
been utterly ruined and overthrown in the battle 
of life, to his attached man-servant, " I am going 
to bed. You will give me, if you please, forty 
drops of laudanum on a lump of sugar, and you 
w^ill wake me up the day after to-morrow. After 
that we will see what can be done." 

There is nothing like going to bed under try- 
ing circumstances, and stopping there. If nature 
has not endowed you with a somnolent faculty — 
if you don't, to your misfortune, belong to the 
great order of sleepy-heads — ^j^ou had best take 
the laudanum on the lump of sugar, as per recipe 
foregoing. But I earnestly recommend you to 
sleep "upon it. Stay in bed as long as ever you 
can. The world must go round ; and perhaps 
your affairs, having come to the worst, may take 
a turn with it. If you wake, turn over on to 
t'other side, and go to sleep again and again, 
until you find yourself so hungry that you must 
needs leap (»ut of bed and proceed to devour some- 
thing or somebody. That same great order of 
Bleepy-heads, to whom I have just alluded, are, 



PHILOSOPHr BETWEEH THE SHEETS. 131 

after all, the people who get on best in the world. 
They don't ^^fash" themselves. They fret not 
themselves because of the ungodly. They just 
pull their night-caps over their brows, shut their 
eyes, find out the cosiest corner in the undula- 
tions of the pillow, and take forty times, or forty 
thousand times, forty winks ; and at their upris- 
ing the odds are forty to one that, desperate as 
things seemed when they fell a-snoozing, they 
have now mended. Caesar — J. Csesar of Rome, 
as poor crazy Mr, Train used to call that con- 
queror — desired to have men about him that 
were fat, and such as slejpt o^ nights. He liked 
not yon Cassius, who had a ^' lean and hungry ^' 
— and a wakeful look, you may be sure. Do yon 
think Lord Palmerston w^ould remain, at seventy- 
nine, our '^ ever versatile, vivacious, and juvenile 
Premier,'^ if he didn't fold his arms, tilt his h^t 
on to the tip of his nose, tuck his legs under the 
Treasury Bench, and go comfortably to sleep 
while the bores of the Opposition were prosing, 
and Caucasian serpents biting the file I He wakes 
up when the cistern of disparagement has fin- 
ished plapping, and comes up smiling, and de- 
molishes his antagonists all roundc There are 
people who habitually go to sleep in omnibuses, 
and on suburban railways; but I never knew 
them to miss their station, or to fail in proguing 
the conductor in the ribs at the right /noment. 



132 BEEAKFAST IK BED; OR, 

There are worshippers who make a point of going 
to sleep in church, be the sermon dullest or the 
most exciting of discourses; yet they always 
know the text, and are reckoned great judges of 
orthodoxy. There are people who go to sleep at 
the theatre, waking up only at the conclusion of 
each act ; yet I have frequently had occasion to 
admire the terseness and acumen with which 
they criticise the piece. And if you will only 
be good enough to go to sleep over the opening 
paragraph of this present number of Breakfast in 
Bed, and, waking at the end, declare it to be the 
best of the series, I shall have the very highest 
respect for your taste and discrimination, and 
shall be eternally grateful to you. 

I say to you, then, sleep upon it ! Good-night, 
Signer Pantaloon ; you will be all the better for 
your nap the day after to-morrow morning. If 
Victorine hadn't slept upon it, all the woes she 
dreamt of might have been realised in actual life. 
" Sleep, gentle lady !" — slumber is good for your 
complexion, your nerves, and your temper ; good, 
also, it may be, for the peace of mind of the 
harassed helot, Man. Eemember those prudent 
young men of Ephesus during the dark ages. 
They had the sagacity to discern that there was 
no use in making head against the prevailing 
persecution of the Christians : that they would 
take nothing by their motion in being martyrised. 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 133 

What did they do ? They betook themselves 
to a comfortable cave, went to sleep, slept for 
centuries, and woke up with a tremendous appe- 
tite for their Breakfast in Bed, and to find that 
the w^orld had become converted to the Christian 
faith. 

I have always thought that ISTapoleon would 
have acted wisely in going to sleep for a couple 
of days or so after his defeat at "Waterloo. Some- 
thing advantageous to Imperialism might have 
turned up in the interim. Instead of indulging in 
a tranquil doze twice or thrice round the clock, 
the restless adventurer must needs go fuming 
about the Elysee, and chopping logic with Ben- 
jamin Constant, and playing at cross-purposes 
with the Senate and the Legislative Body (who, 
being Frenchmen, were, of course, intriguing for 
the destruction of him whom.'tliey deemed aban- 
doned by Fortune) ; and then Lord Yilainton, 
and Field-Marshal Blucher, and Schwarzenburg, 
and Barclay de Tolly, and the whole horde of the 
Allies, came up, and there w^as an end to K'apo- 
leon the Great, who thenceforth was privileged 
to sleep as much as ever he liked at St. Helena 
— a dreary siesta, which had no waking but in a 
miserable death. 

Some people — ministers of state and others — 
forbid their servants to wake them if good news 
arrive while they are asleep. They only desii-e 



IM SEEAKFA-ST IK BED ; OB 

to be aroused if disastrous tidings come. I say, 
sleep on, through good and through evil report. 
Let the good get better, and the bad right itself, 
if it can. Nowhere is the philosophy of this 
doctrine more forcibly illustrated than in the 
history of Mr. Moss Abrahams and Mr. Isaac 
Solomonson. 

Mr. Moss Abrahams had accepted a bill of ex» 
change, of which Mr. Isaac Solomonson was the 
holder. Late on the eve of the acceptance com- 
ing due, Mr. Abrahams discovered that he was 
destitute of funds wdierewith to meet it. Being 
a conscientious and withal a nervous man, he forth- 
with hies him to Mr. Solomonson's residence. 
It w^as midnight, and the holder of the bill had 
long since (like a wise man of business) retired to 
rest. But Mr. Abrahams was determined to 
inform him of his impecuniosity, and knocked 
him np. 

After a little while his creditor put his night- 
capped head out of the second-floor window, and 
demanded, with some asperity, who was there. 

" It ish I, Mr. Isaac Sholomonson," responded 
Mr. Moss Abraliams. 

" And vot do you vant, Mr. Mosh Abrahams, 
at thish time of nightsh!" pettishly asked Mr. 
Solomonson. 

'' O Mr. Isaac Sholomonson, Mr. Isaac 
Sholomonson P^ quoth the disconsolate accepter ; 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEI^ THE SHEETS. 135 

^^ you must be told the newsli. There is a billsh 
for fortv-sheven pound ten due to-morrow, and 
I cannot pay it. I cannot shleep for thinking of 
it, Mr. Sholomonson." 

'^ Go to the devilsh !" cried out Mr. Isaac 
Solomonson, in a rage; ^*^go to the devilsh, Mr. 
Mosh Abrahams ! It is I who cannot shleep^ 
mice you cannot pay the hillsh P^ 

"With which he banged down the window, and 
sued the defaulter next day, dreadfully. 

Imprudent Abrahams ! if he had gone to bed, 
and allowed Mr. Solomonson to slumber undis- 
turbed, that last-named worthy might have woke 
next day in a good temper, and given his debtor 
time. 

All these are capital theories — is it not so? — 
but, like fine words, they butter no parsnips. 
How about reducing them to practice ? Here am 
I, for instance, tumbling and tossing on the un- 
easy couch to which I retired at one o'clock this 
morning ; and I can obtain no rest. This is 
Wednesday, the eighteenth day of March. Since 
Friday night the sixth, I have had, perhaps, about 
one-seventeenth part of the natural rest without 
wliicli, the doctors tell, and nature warns us, 
human beings are apt to go raving mad. I have 
been to bed over and over again. I have carried 
my slumberousness about with me, as Christian, 
ip. B.uuy^n's alfegory, did his .J)urden of sii^s ; but 



136 BREAKFAST IK BED; ORj 

I cannot depose that grim fardel. Leaden weights 
hang to mine eyelids ; but they refuse to recog- 
nise the laws of gravity, and quiescence will not 
shake them off. I can sleep a little standing ; but 
refreshing slumbers desert me when I lie down. 
I can doze in cabs and railway-carriages ; but in 
bed I am horribly wakeful. I think it would do 
me good if I went to sleep for a fortnight. I seem 
to have been in bed for six months, but no good 
has yet come of it. My Breakfast lies untasted 
before me, and half a dozen times I have all but 
kicked the tray off the bed. I am the Weasel ; 
but, oh, how grateful I should be if somebody 
could only just catch me napping, and shave my 
eye-brows off. 

I know what it is this time ; I know what pre- 
vents me obtaining even the eight hours' bare 
rest which are said to be requisite, for a Fool ! O 
my kind friends ! it isn't a question of liver ; it 
isn't pancreas; it isn't devilled kidneys; it isn't 
pork-chops for supper; it isn't that other glass of 
Moselle — I have subsisted chiefly on blotting- 
paper, quill-pens, and abernethy-biscuits these 
ten days past ; it isn't conscience — I haven't rob- 
bed a church, or murdered one of my blood-rela- 
tions ; since Wednesday week I have stolen noth- 
ing but precious days from my life ; I have de- 
frauded nobody but Nature; I have murdered 
nothing but the Queen's English. What is it, 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 137 

then, that makes my bed a rack, and my coun- 
terpane red-hot coals, and my breakfast loath- 
some, and myself intolerable to me ? It is the 
condition of my Poor Feet. 

Well, I suppose there is nothing immodest (even 
in this wonderfully nice-spoken age) in confessing 
that I am afflicted with corns, defying the most 
recondite efforts of pedicurism. Hannah More 
was troubled, I have been given to understand, 
with bunions — and yet she was a good woman. 
The greatest statesmen in this const itutional coun- 
try have suffered from the gout. If it be a crime 
to be hereditarily podagroiis, take me to the 
Tower and clap me into the bilboes at once. 
Then, again, as to varicose veins. Is a man irre- 
trievably ruined, in a moral sense, if he be sub- 
ject to that last-named ailment? If such be the 
case, put me down as a lost one. Finally, there 
is such a condition of frame known in the language 
of the vulgar as being "weak on the pins." I 
am feeble on the supporters. I don't like walk- 
ing. When I do pedestrianise, my unlucky legs 
are always carrying me to the w^rong places, and 
wretchedness and misfortune congregate like 
shards and pebbles beneath my poor feet. 

Within the last few days I have been asked at 
least a thousand times how those poor feet were. 
The interrogation would not have troubled me 
had it been put in a kindly, in a sympathizing 



138 BREAKFAST 11^ BED ; GK, 

spirit, and by people I knew ; but how would 
you like a screeching multitude, fifty thousand 
strong, and with not one of whom, to the best of 
your knowledge, you had even a bowing ac- 
quaintance, to vociferate in your track — in the 
public street, mind — "- Ya-a-a-h ! how are your 
poor feet f / know how my poor feet are by 
this time. My brothers, they are swollen to the 
size and consistency of pumpkins. I feel that I 
shall never be able to put them to the ground 
again. Plenceforth I must go abroad in a bowl, 
like a citl de jaite^ or on a trolly, with a pair of 
leaden dumps to steady myself, or in a go-cart, 
or in a sedan-chair. 

My poor feet have been stamped and trodden 
upon by innumerable feet. The hoofs of Her 
Majesty's Household Cavalry have passed over 
me. Those hoofs have made painful indentations 
on the softest parts of my anatomy. I have been 
kicked and beaten ; I have been knocked down 
and trampled uj)on ; I have been rolled into the 
gutter ; I have been charged by the Eoyal 
Horse Artillery ; I have been under the car- 
riage-wheels of the Corporation of London. The 
metropolitan police have assaulted me ; eighteen 
times have I been garotted by the hands of 
authority gone out of its mind. I am one bruise. 
Ecchymosis and I are synonymous. 

Stop ! my poor feet are 7wt quite so large as 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 139 

pumpkins. There must be exaggeration in such 
a simile. But can you imagine the condition of 
a wretched Egyptian fellah who has just had an 
interview with the Cadi,, and who, according to 
the pugnant expression of Eastern penal jurispru- 
dence, has just " eaten stick '' for non-payment 
of taxes, that is to say, has undergone the agony 
of the bastinado, till the soles of his feet are 
reduced to pulp ? I have read in the book of a 
French tourist, how, after one of these banquets 
of stick, the miserable victim of .fiscal ruthless- 
ness has crawled out of the Hall of Justice on 
his hands and knees, grovelling and wallowing 
his way along, till, reaching the outside of the 
court, his pitying relatives have enveloped his 
poor feet in vine-leaves smeared with olive-oil, 
and swathed them in linen bandages, and borne 
him home, moaning, on their shoulders. 

To such a state do my poor feet approximate ; 
yet wretcheder I than the Egyptian, or " any 
other fellah," for I had nobody to carry me 
home, and the cabs on Saturday night refused to 
budge under five shillings a mile. There wasn't 
a Ryal Hentry hevery day in the year, they 
said. 

The manner of its coming about — of my poor 
feet being gelatinized, I mean — was this. Yield- 
ing to the representations of some very good 
friends of mine, who, with infinite pleasure to the 



140 BEEAKFAST IH BED ; OE, 

public, and great profit to themselves, conduct a 
daily newspaper of large circulation, I consented 
for some twenty -four hours to abdicate the honor- 
able position of a rent-and-tax paying English 
gentleman, and to become a penny-a-liner. ISTow 
there is nothing intrinsically despicable in the 
status of the meritorious and useful individuals 
whose more courteous designation is that of 
" occasional reporters," and who furnish graphic, 
and in the main truthful, narratives of fires, mur- 
ders, accidents, and Lord-Mayor shows, for a 
certain sum of copper, per line, for publication 
in the columns of the metropolitan press. These 
chroniclers, whether they be paid at the rate of 
a penny, or three-halfpence, or twopence-half- 
penny a line, form an exceedingly industrious, 
inoffensive, and intelligent class, and are often 
much better worth their salt than more preten- 
tious scribblers — I name no names — who are 
remunerated for their lucubrations at the rate of 
five guineas a page. But the gluttonous, bibu- 
lous, inconstant, ungrateful British j)ublic have 
taken it into their conceited heads that an occa- 
sional reporter is necessarily a ragged creature, 
w4th a soiled note-book, a battered hat, and a 
bulging umbrella ; a kind of cross between Paul 
Pry, a detective policeman, and a man in pos- 
session ; that he is poor and miserable, as w^ell 
as humble and obscure ; and that it is there- 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEK THE SHEETS. 14:1 

fore expedient to laugh at and to despise 
him. 

Only the other day, travelling by the South- 
Western Railway, I o verb eared a gross, muddle- 
headed, City kind of man, swelling with an over- 
weening sense of his own importance, criticising 
the account of the marriage of the Prince of 
"Wales, w^hich had appeared that morning in the 
" Times " newspaper. 

" What stuff these penny-a-liners do write to 
be sure !" qnoth my gross vis-a-vis to his neigh- 
bor. It would have been as much probably as 
either of them could do in the literary line to 
have WTitten "cash, Dr.; contra, Cr.," at the 
head of a ledger, having reference to transactions 
in cheese or black-lead. The "penny-a-liners" 
whose "stuff" excited their ineffable spleen, 
happened to have been, on the one part, a gen- 
tleman who was " the Pen of the War " throngh- 
out the Crimean campaign, during the Indian 
Mutiny, and in the early and most momentous 
episodes of the American struggle. On the ban- 
ner of William How^ard ^Hussell (who was ^ in 
the nave of St. George's Chapel at the Prince's 
marriage) are emblazoned the words " Sebasto- 
pol," " Cawnpore," and "Potomac." His com- 
rade, Mr. Nicholas Woods (who was in the 
gallery overlooking the choir), is, although 
younger, as familiar as he with battles and 



14^ BREAKFAST IK BED ; OR, 

shipwrecks, with peril, with hardship, and with 
disease. These men have gone through all that 
the most approved warriors can endure. They 
have confronted death in every shape ; they 
have made famous the achievemencs of their 
X30untrymen all over the world ; and, in conso- 
nance with an agreeable and highly practical 
code of Social Law, not a star glitters on their 
breasts, not a whisper of their names is made in 
a despatch or a gazette ; and their sole reward — 
beyond the applause of the select few who know 
their worth — is to be called " penny-a-liners " 
by a fat, ignorant cheesemonger ; ay, and the 
taunt can be as glibly and impudently and men- 
daciously repeated by thousands who are neither 
fat, nor ignorant, nor cheesemongers. 

"Well, I took up my pilgrim's staff and scrip 
cheerfully, and 1 agreed, as a "penny-a-liner," 
in the caseous acceptation of the term, to write 
an account of the entry of the Princess Alexan- 
dra into London. I was to take the procession 
up at London Bridge, and to follow its course as 
far as Pall Mall ; and as I did not happen to be 
capable, like Sir Boyle Poche's bird, of being in 
two places at once, and furthermore, as, by 
remaining stationary either at the Bridge, or 
.at the Mansion House, or at a window in 
Cheapside, or in ths gallery at St. Paul's, or 
in Fleet Street, or the Strand, or Trafalgar 



PHILOSOPHY BETYfEEN THE SHEETS. 143 

Square, I could liave seen the pageant only as a 
passing vision, and should have missed its most 
astonishing framework, the crowd — ^it was.- ar- 
ranged that I should follow in its wake along 
the streets from the confines of the City to the 
West End. How to do so without let or hind- 
rance was a -chief object of solicitude. The 
police along the line of route were first to be 
thought of by one who didn't wish to be knocked 
down or taken into custody for intruding himself 
where he had no business to be. 

I conceived that, in the interest of the public, 
who would be crazy to read a complete account 
of the royal entry in the newspapers on Monday 
morning, I had more than a right — I had an 
absolute call — to see as much of the procession 
as I possibly could. So I addressed myself to 
Captain Hodgson, the acting Commissioner of 
the City Police, and obtained from that courteous 
but overworked functionary a bufi* card, empow- 
ering '' bearer to pass along the line on foot." 
A similar card, but white in hue, had been pro- 
cured for me from the Commissioner of Metro- 
politan Police ; but wishing to make assurance 
doubly sure, I wrote on Friday afternoon a pretty 
litle poulet to Sir Richard Mayne, at his bower 
by Whitehall, stating who I was, the nature of 
the essentially public service I had undertaken 
to perform, the need there was for persons 



144: BREAKFAST W BED; OR, 

representing the daily newspapers to be per- 
mitted to circulate unimpeded from point to 
point, and sundry little gentillesses of that 
description. 

Sir Richard Mayne, K.C.B., sent me, by the 
commissionnaire attached to the chib of which I 
am a humble member, his complinients and 
another card, with, "To the police along the 
line. Pass the bearer on foot. — ^Eichard Mayne ;" 
the pasteboard stamped with the royal arms, and 
the whole enclosed in the handsomest official 
envelope it has ever been my privilege to gaze 
upon. " Come," I said, with premature compla- 
cency, " who shall accuse les gens de la police of 
want of courtesy after this ?" Alas, I little knew 
what was to happen to my poor feet ! 

1 was up the next morning by seven, prepared 
for a leisurely promenade along the streets, well- 
lined and kept by policemen, soldiers, and volun- 
teers, from the Bricklayers' Arms to Paddington. 
Suddenly there arrived a missive from a friend, 
who had likewise accepted the mission of a penny- 
a-liner. " The Corporation of London," he WTote, 
*' have permitted the representatives of the press 
to follow the civic procession in an open carriage. 
There is a place- reserved for you in a landau, 
which will convey you as far as Temple Bar ; after 
that (the civic cortege filing up Chancery Lane) 
you must shift for yourself. Moreover, the Lord 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 14:5 

Mayor and the Reception Committee will he 
liappj to see you to breakfast at Gruildhall, at 
half-past ten o'clock precisely.'^ 

ISTeed I say that I didn't Breakfast in Bed on 
the morning of Saturday, the Yth of March ? I 
like breakfasting with Corporations. It makes 
you, for the time, feel wealthy and substantial. 
My friend with the landau happened to be a 
neighbor ; so blithely I trudged from the Square 
of Russell to the Square of Brunswick, and at the 
portal of one of the mansions therein, I found the 
carriage, " drawn by two noble steeds." It was 
like- going to the Derby, only the hamper was to 
be found by the Fathers of the City. "We started 
about nine^ with a full complement of ladies, 
children, and gentlemen. Tlie former we were to 
drop in divers localities in the City, whence the 
procession could be witnessed. The founder of 
the feast — I mean of the landau — ^left us in King 
William Street, being bound for Gravesend, 
where he was to witness the disembarkation of 
the Princess. 

Even at this early period of the morning the 
streets were almost impassable, and it was a 
quarter past ten ere we reached the entrance to 
Guildhall Yard. In Guildhall I found three 
gentlemen who were to be my companions in the 
famous landau : one was an eloquent and de- 
servedly popular London clergyman ; the second 

1 



14:6 BEEAKFAST IJST BED ; OE, 

was a dramatist and essayist of repute ; the third 
was a barrister, writer of leading articles, and 
habitue of the Reporters' Gallery in the House of 
Commons. Nay, the landau was to hold five- 
Place number four was to be occupied by a 
gentleman from the '^ Times ;" and the fifth per- 
sonage in the triumphant chariot was to be the 
hapless orphan with the poor feet who has now 
the melancholy pleasure to address you. For the 
nonce we were all penny-a-liners. Briefly will 
I dismiss the breakfast in Guildhall, albeit it was 
the only event throughout the day that was un- 
mingled with agony. 

The Corporation comported themselves, as 
they always do, with hospitality and politeness. 
They gave me a hearty welcome, and a bridal 
favor as big as a pancake. I might have feasted 
upon game-pie, foie graSj cold turkey, Moselle, 
blanc-mange, and other delicacies, had they not 
all entered into the grim Index Expurgatorius of 
my medical attendant. But everything looked 
rosy-colored: Aldermen in cocked hats; Com- 
mon Councilmen in furred gowns; the City Mar- 
shal as large as life ; the ward-beadles with their 
gilt pokers ; the Lord Mayor's state footmen ; the 
deputy-lieutenants in their ^arlet and silver. All 
this, combined with hand-shaking, snuff-taking, 
the pinning-on of favors, and the popping of 
champagne-corks, conduced to a feeling of exhil^- 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 147 

ration easier to be imagined than described. You 
see that I have adopted, with cheerful alacrity, 
the penny-a-liner's style. 

We didn't get on very well with onr landan. 
We found it waiting for us at the bottom of 
Aldermanbury, after breakfast; but as it hap- 
pened to be at the precise tail-end of the pro- 
cession, and there were some hundreds more open 
carriages before us, all crammed with dignitaries 
of the Corporation and the City guilds, and all 
jammed up, apparently inextricably, in a com- 
pact mass, the chance of our getting to London 
Bridge, or to the Mansion House, or to Cheapside, 
or to anywhere else on this side Ultima Thule, 
became, by one o'clock in the afternoon, exceed- 
ing shady, not to say hopeless. We — the clergy- 
man, the barrister, the dramatist, and the "Times " 
man — ^bore it as long as we could ; but when the 
probability of the Princess's having arrived, hav- 
ing passed through Temple Bar, and being full 
trot on her way to Paddington, assumed more 
and more tangible proportions, we began to grow 
nervous for the welfare of the public, of our pro- 
prietors and ourselves. First w^e made jests about 
the immovable landau ; then we grumbled at 
its immobility ; then we devoted it wholesale to 
perdition. 

Finally we abandoned it to its fate ; and 
telling the coachman to pick us up wherever he 



148 



could find us in the line of procession, we made 
our way to Guildhall again, pushing, grinding, 
and jostling through the well-packed throng, and 
found the head of the civic train just about 
moving. 

It was one of the most inconceivable jumbles 
of brass-bands, rifle volunteers, policemen on 
horseback and policemen on foot, horse-artillery- 
men, aldermen, common councilmen, javelin-men, 
watermen, standard-bearers, ticket-porters, and 
long-shore men, that was ever visible out of the 
phantasmagoric vision of a raving maniac, with 
superadded delirium tremens^ who has been 
supping on raw pork-chops with Mr. Home the 
medium, and reading Hoffmann's Tales, and the 
" Woman in White " to the accompaniment of 
cavendish tobacco and strong green tea. My 
poor feet began to suffer. Once or twice I was 
lifted off them bodily, and then asked in indig- 
nant terms, " vere I vos a shovin' to ?" I shoved 
at last into the midst of a group of ancient per- 
sons clad in red-baize jerkins, with pewter 
platters on the breasts thereof, jockey-caps, knee- 
smalls, and white stockings, with ankle-jacks a la 
" Roberto Pulveroso," or " Dusty Bob.'' These 
strange and weird creatures all carried banners 
covered with heraldic emblazonments of anti- 
quated aspect. On inquiry, I found one of them 
to contain the arms of the "late Sheriff Cow- 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 149 

dery." Who was Cowdery, and when did he 
die ? 

Another bore the cognizance of "the late 
Countess of Kent." Why, bless me ! that must 
have been Joan, the fair countess, who married 
Edward the Black Prince ! That comely widow 
has been dead something considerably over five 
hundred years. 

Tliese venerable standard-bearers seemed to 
belong to another world. In two points only 
could they claim affinity to the present century. 
Knee-breeches, cotton stockings, and ankle-jacks, 
for the first, were not habitually worn in the 
Middle Ages ; and for the second, these weird 
servitors all smelt strongly of rum, a spirit 
which was hardly popular as a stimulant in this 
country previous to the colonization of the West 
Indies. 

However, in a common crush we are all equal. 
Clergyman, barrister, dramatist, journalist, and 
standard-bearers — we all trudged on, a band of 
brothers. 

IsTay, there even affiliated himself unto us a 
gentleman in corduroy, much japanned with 
grease, and wearing the shockingest hat I have 
gazed upon for many a day. He smelt even more 
powerfully of rum than the ancient standard- 
bearers, to one of whom he stood in the relation 
of brother-inJaw, or of bosom friend, or of 



150 BKEAKFAST IN BED; OE, 

" mate/' though out of civic costume. When 
his friend was tired, he carried his banner for him 
— indeed I did as much for another weazened old 
mortal in red baize ; but he was careless as to 
how he carried it ; and he flapped the silk in my 
eyes, and occasionally stood the pole at ease on 
my poor feet with the utmost insouciance. 

He was moreover quarrelsome in demeanor, 
unsteady in his gait, and decidedly not choice in 
his language. On the whole, I hope to be dis- 
pensed, for some time to come, from the compa- 
nionship of such a drunken, abusive vagabond as 
the gentleman in corduroy proved himself to be. 

My agonies continued literally from morn to 
dewy eve, for it rained cats and dogs before six 
P.M. How I managed to squeeze on to London 
Bridge, and, when the Prince and Princess had 
passed, to squeeze off it again ; howl was jostled 
through the City, and fairly knocked down at 
Temple Bar, ground against the walls of that 
structure, and galloped over by a squadron of 
Dragoons ; how the Metropolitan Police exhi- 
bited an utter indifference to Sir Eichard 
Mayne's passport, and vehemently informed me 
that I should not pass along the line on foot — 
whereupon I as vehemently declared that I 
must and would pass, and dared them to take 
me into custody, and defied them to mortal com- 
bat — which physically I got lamentably the 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS, 151 

worst of, but was morally victorious, for I 
gained my end, and got from Temple Bar to 
Pall Mall, five minutes after the royal carriage 
Iiad passed ; how at last, bruised, bleeding, ex- 
hausted, and blacker than any sweep, I saw, in 
the gallery erected in front of a certain pala- 
tial edifice in Pall Mall, the bonnet of the wife 
of my bosom ; how, my out-of-door task being 
over, I mentally bade the royal procession go 
hang, and with a last desperate plunge through 
the mob, reached the steps of the Club, and pro- 
cured lobster-salad and the sparkling vintage of 
Epernay for the wearer of the bonnet and her 
companion ; how I gnawed the leg of a fowl with 
a grim sense of complacency at sitting at last 
under my own fig-tree, with no man to make me 
afraid — not even the dunderheaded police, and 
the remarkably obtuse and discourteous Captain 
Labalmondiere, who seemed to think that Sir 
Richard Mayne had granted passes to the repre- 
sentatives of the press as a mere joke, and was for 
driving me back from Trafalgar Square eastward, 
but was baffled by my persistence and agility ; 
how we couldn^t get a cab home, and nobody 
would lend me a brougham, and I had lent my 
own to " a lady friend " (which her name is Har- 
ris) ; how the new bonnet was spoilt in the rain, 
and we reached home about eight ; and how, 
after drinking about a gallon and a half of tea, I 



152 

sat down to work, and wrote all that night and 
the best part of the next day (breaking the Sab- 
bath, alas!), in order that the British public 
might read all about the reception of the Prince 
and Princess in the newspapers on Monday 
morning ; — all these things are written in other 
chronicles, and it boots not now to dwell upon 
them with more particularity. I drank, let it 
suffice to say, the cup of penny-a-lining to the 
Yery last dregs. 

But was it not all my own doing ? I had laid 
down the mantle of respectability, and taken up 
the toga of the penny-a-liner. I was nobody — ' 
less than nobody. The crowd knew it, and 
laughed my nothingness to scorn. Five thou- 
sand "roughs" pointed me out with the dirty 
finger of derision, and five thousand City Arabs 
howled at me. It is my custom to dress in 
black— being generally in mourning for my re- 
latives, or my friends, or myself; and nature, 
not unassisted by art, has conferred upon me 
a red nose. The crowd in Oheapside declared 
that I was a mute. They called me bone- 
grubber. They assailed me with much more 
inyectiye, coupled with many more expletives, 
which I disdain to transcribe. It was all my 
own fault. "What business had I with " occa- 
sional reporting?" 

My friends have been telling me so ever 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 163 

since. I have derogated, they inform me, from 
my standing in letters and in society. I answer, 
that I have no such pediment left — only a pair 
of poor feet, which I can't stand npon ; that I 
voluntarily accepted a duty ; that I carried it 
out to the best of my ability ; and that I haven't 
a single toe-nail left. 



164 BREAKFAST IN BED ; OB, 



O^ A EEMAEKABLE DOG. 

Feom the lower regions of this establishment 
comes wafted towards me, in rippling freshets of 
sound, softened and mellowed by divagation, a 
deep bayingo With the utmost regularity every 
morning, while I am Breakfasting in Bed, just as 
I have begun to crunch my second slice of dry 
toast, I hear that baying. There is no mistaking 
its import. I know what it means, quite as well 
as I do the signification of the knocks and rings 
at the door about this time in the morning. For 
example, there is the milk, with her customary 
ranz des vaches—^^ vaccine arrangement which, I 
much fear, has been associated, since we have 
been resident in London, with the handle of the 
pump nearest to the dairy where the professedly 
lacteal fluid is concocted for metropolitan con- 
sumption. Then there is the baker, whose knock 
is a determined one, and who is an individual of 
arrogant mien, but who has been slightly less in- 
dependent since the carts of the Aerated Bread 
Company (Limited) took to calling for orders. 
Between the milk and the baker, the watercress- 
seller makes himself audible at the area-railing, 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEIJ THE SHEETS. 155 

and directly afterwards the first intonation of 
'' Clo' !" is heard from the street. 

If I draw aside the window-blind a little^ and 
peep, I am pretty sure to see the Hebrew gentle- 
man from Houndsditch glancing wistfully np- 
wards, as though in meek remonstrance at the 
closed casement of my bower. " Why does that 
lazy fellow persist in Breakfasting in Bed ? why 
doesn't he come down, like a man, and sell me 
three pairs of old trousers and a little veskit f "— 
I fancy the harmless Caucasian is murmuring. 

Then the postman's knock, in its sharp, impe- 
rious rat-tat, makes you start and shudder. I 
believe it was Mr. Howard Glover who, in con- 
junction with an artist in chromo-lithography, 
undertook to inculcate the extremely erroneous 
theory that everybody was glad to hear the post- 
man's knock. I would give the functionary in 
question a very long holiday, had I the power of 
dismissal. I never knew any good that came out 
of the Greneral Post-Office- — ^nay, nor out of the 
defunct twopenny institution. I^ext to the agony 
of writing letters must rank, I think, the torture 
of receiving them ; yet, personally, I am consoled 
at the thought, that on one morning of the year 
(Sundays always excepted) the postman leaves 
my knocker alone. This solitary blissful occa- 
sion is Yalentine's Day. 

Let me see: is my reckoning according to 



156 BEEAKFAST IN BED; OE, 

Cocker, and Colenso ? The milk, the baker, the 
"watercresses, the clothesman, the postman. Yes ; 
I think they make up the sum of noises — ^the or- 
dinary and distant street-cries, that don't concern 
you, being left out of calculation — till the news- 
paper-boy is due, and, with varying punctuality, 
makes his appearance. A young vagabond ! The 
fibs- that boy tells would have driven Baron Mun- 
chausen wild with envy. His mendacity is splen- 
did in its boldness. 

I am in the habit of taking in a high Tory 
morning journal, a rampantly Eadical, a sen':en- 
tiously sentimental, and an icily Liberal one, and 
mixing up my perusal of them, paragraph for 
paragraph, in order to keep my head clear, and 
to cultivate a decent impartiality. In nine cases 
out of ten the newspaper-boy forgets, or omits, or 
refuses to bring one or another of the elements in 
this mental pabulum. The excuses he pleads are 
amazing in their variety and impudence : " They 
wos hall sold out at the hoffice ;'' " I couldn't get 
ne'er a copy no-how ;" " The bother boy went 
hoff with five quire ;" " Yourn was left at number 
heleven, round the corner;" "Missis is liill;" 
" Master won't let me have none ;" — ^these are a 
few of his artful pleas in abatement; but his 
favorite one is, " The machine 'as broke down." 
It doesn't matter whether the non-forthcoir ing 
journal has a circulation of five hundred o of 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN TME SHEETS. 157 

fifty thousand. The back of the " machine " is 
considered broad enough to bear any burden of 
blame, however onerous; and it has not unfre- 
quently happened, that I hare risen very early, 
or been kept up very late, and been at a news- 
paper-oflfice and seen the ceremony of publication 
successfully completed, only to meet, on my re- 
turn home, with the news-boy's cool assertion, 
that " The machine 'as broke down." He has 
very probably been playing fly-the-garter in the 
gutter, instead of waiting his turn at the office ; 
or, if any momentous news have arrived, has 
sold the paper intended for me to a chance cus- 
tomer in the street, at a premium. 

Hark ! that baying sound is heard once more. 
If due attention be not paid to it, for the third 
time it will be audible, and in a remonstrant 
minatory tone ; and then — though the .catastro- 
phe happens but seldom — the house won't be 
large enough for the disturbance that will take 
place. There is no stopping one's ears to that 
baying. It is the voice of the dog Boodlejaok 
demanding breakfast. 

Void la difference entire nous deux : Boodle- 
jack has four legs, and I have two — it being 
granted, for the sake of argument, that I habitu- 
ally walk erect. I sleep in the second-floor 
front, and Boodlejack in the back-yard. I Break- 
fast in Bed, Boodlejack in a kennel carpeted 



158 



with straw. Boodlejack bays for his breakfast, I 
ring the bell for mine. If he doesn't get it as 
quickly as he deems right and proper, he bays 
again and again, and ultimately howls, barks, 
rattles his chain, tears up his straw, kicks over 
his water-pan, and overturns his kennel. If I 
don't get my breakfast when I ring for it, I ring 
again and again, and then — well, what do you 
do, my revered friend, when your wishes are not 
attended to ? Do you bear your lot with angelic 
patience, and after a lapse of half an hour falter 
forth words of gratitude when somebody comes 
up to ask whether you were pleased to ring or 
not ? or do you grumble, swear, kick off the bed- 
clothes, give the servants warning, and threaten 
to smash the furniture ? As a middle course, I 
should advise you to keep in your bed-room a 
six-pound cannon-ball, *r, better still, a pair of 
dumb-bells. 

If you experience any remissness of attention 
to your summons, just open your bed-room door, 
pop out on to the landing, and hurl the ball, or the 
bells,- with as much momentum as ever you can 
muster, down-stairs. Those missiles will produce 
so hideous and alarming a clatter in the house, 
that, ere two minutes are over, the whole estab- 
lishment will be on the qui vive at the door ; and 
then you may, with perfect ease and confidence 
assume the angelic smile, and meekly hint that 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 159 

you would feel very mucli obliged by a cup of 
tea being brought to you at the perfect conve- 
nience of tlie domestics. The suggestion of thus 
applying the useful metals to making one's wants 
known, I owe to the dog Boodlejack, who, 
when hard pushed for sustenance, is, as I have 
premised, given to rattling his chain against the 
wall of his kennel in a most horrifying manner. 

I have noticed a few points wherein Boodlejack 
and I differ, albeit the difference is only one of 
degree ; but there are many in which similarity 
between the dog and his master — if I am his mas- 
ter, physically or morally, the which I doubt 
sometimes — can be traced. Boodlejack has a 
temper; I have a temper. Boodlejack is glut- 
tonous and lazy ; I am ditto ditto. Boodlejack 
has a butcher ; I have a butcher. I am allowed 
kidneys for breakfast twice a we€k ; Boodlejack 
has tripe on Tuesdays and Fridays. For the rest, 
I hold Boodlejack to be quite as good as I am; 
although I very much doubt whether I am as 
good as Boodlejack. 

In the garden of Kewstead Abbey, Lord Byron 
erected, in the year 1808, a monument to a favor- 
ite ISTewfoundland dog named Boatswain. To- 
wards this animal his lordship appears to have 
entertained something very like genuine affec- 
tion ; and the verses inscribed over his tombstone 
have sufficient cynicism, mingled with their 



160 BKEAKFAST IN BED; OR, 

pathos, to make us believe in their sincerity. 
The poetry is but so-so ; for whenever a man has 
to put sorrow into verse, his finer feelings are apt 
to become absorbed in the exigence of tagging 
rhymes together, and liis muse begins to be redo- 
lent of the shop, like a mute's countenance, or 
the white pocket-handkerchief of a chief mourner. 

"When some proud son of man returns to earth, 
Unknown to glory, but upheld by birth, 
The sculptor's art exhausts the pomp of woe, 
And storied urn records who rests below.'' 

This is very fine, but is bringing down the dog 
at somewhat of a long shot. I like the prose 
epitaph, still visible over Boatswain's grave, much 
better. 

*' Near this spot 

Are deposited the Remains of one 

Who possessed Beauty without Vanity, 

Strength without Insolence, 

Courage without Ferocity, 

And all the Virtues of Man without his Vices. 

This Praise, which would be unmeaning 

Flattery 

If inscribed over Human Ashes, 

Is but a just tribute to the Memory of 

Boatswain, a Dog, 

Who was born at Newfoundland, May, 1803, 

And died at Newstead Abbey, November 18, 1808." ' 

There is a fine healthy tone of misanthropy in 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. l61 

the line ascribing " all the virtues of man with- 
out his vices" to the poor defunct bow-wovv^, 
almost smacking of the spirit which led Diderot 
and Swift, in a congenial moment, to write books 
against their own species. Swift, being mad, 
published his— and the gorge of mankind will 
continue, so long as letters last, to rise at the 
loathsome picture of the Yahoos ; but Diderot, 
not being a crazy cathedral-dean and ex-counsel- 
lor of the Tory ministry, but only an infidel 
French encyclopedist, had sense enough to keep 
his Satire upon Man in his own desk, and to burn 
it before he died. 

- " All the virtues of man without his vices !" 
The temper of th© antithesis is charmingly char- 
acteristic. It is only when a man begins to find 
out how bad he himself is that he discovers the 
summum honum to be resident in the lower ani- 
mals. But are they "lower animals?" What 
do I know of the mystery of the beasts ? "What 
though the doctrine of the metempsychosis held 
water, and Boodlejack were once upon a time a 
. bishop ? He is greedy enough, and, with the as- 
sistance of the Tuesday and Friday's tripe, he is 
growing fat enough for the episcopacy. 

Now-a-days, when the principal functions of 
Christian pastors seem to be confined to petition- 
ing railway companies against running excursion 
trains on Sundays, and orthodox Bishop A.'a 



162 BREAKFAST IN BED; OR, 

learning tails him, and compels Mm to resort to 
the assistance of Layman B., to confute skeptical 
Bishop 0. on the vexed question of the hare 
chewing the cud, and N"oah's ark being big 
enough to hold all the creeping things which, 
according to Moses, went up into it — now-a-days, 
when a bishop has grown, in the opinion of most 
men, to be somewhat of the dummy or clothes* 
prop kind of creature, I don't see why Boodlejack, 
in an apron, and with a shovel-hat projecting 
over his muzzle, should not write himself " Can- 
tuar," or ^^Ebor," or ^^Dunelm." I question, 
however — fond as he is of tripe, and partial to 
whatever other " pretty tiny kickshaws," in the 
way of bones, trimmings, and lumps of fat, the 
cook may jfind him — whether his powers of de- 
glutition are equal to eating up an income of 
from five to fifteen thousand a year. 

But let me leave for a time the Boodlejack 
speculative for the Boodlejack absolute. First, 
a's to his name. "Well, I will admit that is an 
odd, perhaps an absurd one ; but has not the pro- 
prietor of an animal the right to bestow what- 
ever appellation he chooses upon his chattel ? A 
late eminent wit had two pigs, on which he con- 
ferred the cognomen of the publishers from 
whom he derived the major part of his income. 
Why shouldn't I call my dog Boodlejack, if I 
elect so to do ? The name may be ridiculous ; 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 163 

but, being devoid of meaning, is not liable to be 
resented as a personal affront by anybody. Sup- 
pose I had called bim "Butler," or "Langie- 
wicz," or "' Two Hundred and Ninety," who 
knows what susceptibilities I might have wounded, 
what sensitive toes I might have trodden upon ? 
There was never a human being, I opine, called 
Boodlejack, and I am therefore safe from any 
imputation of invidious motives. One is obliged 
to be so very cautious in these days, you see. 

Besides, the dog's real name is not Boodlejack 
at all. Although it sounds like an amplification, 
it is son petit nam — his wheedling, caressing 
appellative. The brute's real name is Mungo. I 
named him Mungo the first hour he was brought 
to me, a black-nosed, liver-colored mastiff puppy, 
and a present from a young lady who is now 
gone to JSTew Zealand. " Puppy," I said to him, 
as he grovelled, shivering and whining, on the 
hearthrug at my chambers in town, " your name 
is to be Mungo, as is fitting for such a sable- 
muzzled animal — and I shall expect you to be- 
have yourself as such." He nearly worried my 
life out that morning. He was so very cold ; 
and when you wrapped him up in a blanket, he 
essayed to swallow the corners, and nearly choked 
himself therewith. 

Milk was brought to him ; but he spurned it 
from him, and spilt it on the carpet. He would 



164 BREAKFAST m BED ; OE, 

do nothing practicable, but climb over the fender 
and nestle among the coals. His little hide was 
pitted, ere long, with hot-coal marks ; but he had 
not sense enough to remove himself, or docility- 
enough to suffer removal from the dangerous 
contiguity of the grate ; and the burnt puppy > 
did not dread the fire. The lady who had given 
him to me, was a young person of prompt deci- 
sion and inflexible determination. When I tell 
you that, as a governess in Kussia, she had kept 
a live bear in her sitting-room, you may imagine 
that she was not of the calibre to stand any non- 
sense. But I was powerless to do anything with 
the puppy. Although diminutive, he was savage. 
He bit me thrice before I had been acquainted 
with him as many half-hours, and his growl 
would have befitted a puppy four times his size. 
I lived then some twenty miles down the Great 
Western Railway ; and when it came to be time 
to catch the train, I borrowed a hand-basket and 
some flannel, crammed Mungo into it head fore- 
most, and took him away to Paddington. 

When, after much growling and snapping, and 
very nearly compromising me with the railway 
company for surreptitious conveyance of animals 
in their carriages, I got him home, I did not say 
he had been presented to me by a young lady. I 
think I named a young gentleman, an old school- 
fellow, a friendly dog-fancier, or something of the 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEE2T THE SHEETS. 165 

kind. Life is so short, and so beset with inherent 
woes, that it is best to avoid domestic disputes. 
The secret was ere long divulged ; but it is, hap- 
pily, a long way to New Zealand, and, as Mungo 
speedily became beloved as the apple of the eye 
by the head of the household, it mattered little 
whether he was a present from Wirimu Kingi or 
from Fair Rosamond. 

But he did not remain Mungo, nor, indeed, a 
mastiff puppy, long. He passed through the 
transition stages of Mung, Bungy, Bumpy, Boo- 
dle, and eventually became Boodlejack. I grant 
the etymological process to have been as recon- 
dite as that which derived " cucumber " from 
King Jeremiah. His change of breed was even 
more remarkable. He was about six weeks old 
when I first knew him ; then he was all mastiflf. 
In his third month he looked uncommonly like a 
bull-terrier. Then he grew to the likeness of a 
^Newfoundland, only of the wrong color. Then 
his nose became elongated, his ribs defined, his 
barrel prolonged, his haunches slendered, and he 
resembled a greyhound. 

At present, being about fifteen months old, I 
am sure I don't know what he is like, save a very 
big house-dog, with a terribly gruflf voice, an^ an 
insatiable appetite. I have grown somewhat 
chary of showing Mungo to my friends ; for I 
used so to brag of him in his infancy as a suck- 



166 



ing mastiff, that, looking at Mm now, they burst 
into the guffaw of derision, and cry, "That a 
mastiff! why, he's nothing better than a mon- 
grel !" ITever mind what he is. He has the 
kindest and faithfuUest heart that ever dog or 
man possessed ; and he is strong enough to tackle 
a garotter, and kill him. 

At the house I took the liberty of occupying 
when Boodlejack, alias Mungo, was a puppy, 
there were four big dogs ; but they belonged, not 
to me, but to the landlord, and were placed on 
the premises quite as much for the purpose of 
protecting his own farm-yard, which adjoined 
our habitation, as for guarding us against the 
midnight marauder or ihe noonday tramp. You 
know that, chief among the delights of dwelling 
in a sequestered rural nook, is the apprehension, 
at almost every hour of the day and night, of 
being robbed. Our village, which was about 
three-quarters of a mile distant, was rather fa- 
mous for housebreakers ; and I have no doubt 
that a neat little burglary to be committed in our 
house was " put up " about once a fortnight in 
one of the beershops of the adjacent hamlet. 
Our " crib," however, was never " cracked ;" 
and I am inclined to attribute our immunity from 
spoliation to the terrible renown for strength and 
ferocity of our four big dogs. 

Not but if the blackguards who are in tlie 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 167 

habit of making raids on country houses, with 
shirts over their clothes, and crape over their 
faces, and of murdering people in their beds if 
they are disturbed in their enterprise, had pos-. 
sessed to the most limited extent the reasoning 
faculty, they would have made very light of our 
four dogs — leaving the infantile Boodlejack out 
of the reckoning altogether — strong and valiant 
as they were. In the first place, three out of 
these four dogs were useless for any purpose of 
giving an alarm ; for they howled and barked 
all day and all night in the most persistent and 
inconsequential manner. They cried "wolf" 
when there was no wolf. They bayed the moon 
and the night birds; they barked at the chickens 
and the pigs ; they were driven to fury by the 
barn-door cat-s ; and when they had nothing ani- 
mate or inanimate to make a turmoil about, they 
bewailed in dolorous accents their own hard fate 
in being chained up, and having nothing to eat 
but a bucket of gruel every morning, and the 
hind-leg of a horse once a fortnight. The noise 
they made was so continuous, that in the dead of 
night even, we took no more notice of it than of 
the screech-owls or the distant railway whistle. 
The fourth dog was more serviceable. He was 
a big bull, oi' a morose and secretive temperament. 
He did not bark once in a month ; but when the 
bull did give tongue, we all knew there was 



168 



sometliing the matter, and rose from onr beds 
accordingly. Why not have let the dogs loose 
at night ? you may ask. 

N"ot one landlord in a dozen dare do that. The 
animals may be decoyed away, or poisoned by 
prepared liver carefully distributed about the 
bounds they are likely to beat. Moreover, I was 
in the habit of returning by the last train Yrom 
Loudon, which did not bring me to our village 
till a quarter to one a. m. ; and my landlord, who 
dwelt in a little lodge close by, was even a later 
bird than L This is why we didn't let the dogs 
loose. 

The dog is a sagacious animal, the friend of 
man, and very fond of his master in the day- 
time ; but at night his power of discriminating 
between a burglar and an honest man is apt to 
grow confused, and he is not unaddicted to pull- 
ing his proprietor down and tearing out his throat. 
If the burglars had been logicians, they would 
have bethought themselves of these things ; but 
happily they did not, and the renown of our four- 
footed sentinels was quite sufficient to scare them 
away. 

Was it Boodlejack's fault if, educated on the 
threshold of this turbulent guardroom, he grew 
up to be somewhat rough, not to say fierce, in his 
demeanor? He early, however, established a 
claim to be considered a " remarkable dog " (else 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS, 169 

I should have been ashamed to proclaim him as 
Bueh at the head of this Paper), by drawing the 
nicest of distinctions between the people who 
were to be barked at and bitten, and those who 
were to be treated with courtesy and affection. 
TliLiSj he didn't bite me or mine, or the friends 
who were good enough (paying their own rail- 
way fare) to come and chop and sleep beneath 
my humble although picturesque roof-tree ; but 
he flew at all tradespeople, as persons vending 
wares generally of inferior quality, and accus- 
tomed, besides, to call for sums of money which 
they alleged to be due to them at times and 
seasons not always convenient to his proprietors. 
Tow^ards poor men, as a rule, he was pitiless. He 
hated the necessitous classes, the hisognosos^ the 
importunate suppliants, with such a concentrated 
bitterness and remorseless activity, that you 
might have imagined him a relieving-officer, or a 
Government clerk. 

The tramps and the Irishwomen who lurked 
about, under~ pretence of selling bobbins and 
muffatees and babies' caps, to see what they 
could lay their pilfering hands upon, he leapt up 
at savagely, and worried as well as his little teeth 
— oh, but they were sharp ones ! — would allow 
him. To see him shake the corduroy, clay-caked 
leg of an agricultural vagrant would have done 
a Pharisee's heart good. He was so vindictive 

8 



170 BREAKFAST IN BED ; OR, 

towards small ragged children, that I had some 
thoughts of re-christening him Malthus, deeming 
him descended from some notable baby-tearer 
erst in the possession of the reverend writer on 
population. Blessings on the reverend writer's 
pious memory ! and I hope he has got it hot by 
this time. To the gipsies also he entertained the 
liveliest aversion ; an aversion not uncommon 
among those who reside in the arcadian districts, 
and who do not habitually get their living by 
begging or thieving. I am ashamed to say that 
I entertain not the smallest amount of sympathy 
towards the Bohemian race. 

A fellow-feeling does not make me wondrous 
kind, or even commonly civil to them. Hircius 
will be shocked to hear this. Spungius will lift 
up his hands ; for is not my name Devil's-hoof ? 
Have I not lived under the blanket-roof, and 
w^armed the patched kettle with the farmer's 
fagots to cook the poached hare ? Have I not 
found linen on every hedge? It may be so, 
metaphorically ; but I would rather not have the 
children of Egypt camping in my neighborhood. 
I don't believe in their tinkering, and I don't 
believe in their horse-whispering, and I don't 
believe in their fortune-telling ; but I do believe 
in their dirt, and their idleness, and their impu- 
dence, and their picking-and-stealing propensities. 
Boodlejack was of my opinioii, and was down on. 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN" THE SHEETS. 171 

or rather up at the brownskins whenever they 
ventured within onr gates. 

It was another among the peculiarities of this 
remarkable dog, that he hated Eton boys. You 
are aw^are that^ once seen, an Eton boy cannot be 
forgotten. Still less can he be confounded with 
any other boy belonging to any other school, 
academy, seminary, or collegiate institution what- 
soever. He is about the prettiest, lithest, cleanest 
little lad you would wish to dwell upon. His hat 
is always shiny. It is always a chimney-pot hat. 
An Eton boy who wore a cap, or a pork-pie, or a 
wide-awake, would be, I suppose, after a birching 
in terrorem round the quadrangle, expelled the 
precincts of the antique spires. His lay-down 
collar is always snowy white. His trousers, his 
round jacket, his dandy scarf a.nd waistcoat, are 
of faultless make. Nine out of ten Eton boys 
have gold watch-chains. Many, when out of 
bounds, have rings on their fingers. Few go to 
town without gloves. An Eton boy's hair is 
always well brushed. You can see in a moment 
that he belongs to the superior classes. And so, 
indeed, he does. 

That fair-skinned urchin of eleven is the little 
Duke of Pampotter. He is heir to an estate of 
ninety thousand a year. He is a high and mighty 
prince. His father, the fifth duke (Claudius 
Polonius), was a Knight of the Garter ; and some 



172 beeakfIst m bed ; or, 

of these days little Pampotter will have his stall 
in St. George's chapel, and be written down K.G. 
Toil can see at a glance that the boy is a gentle- 
man. After all, there is something in J^orman 
blood, or at all events in illustrious descent. 

Let me see, who is that other little urchin, 
aged ten, who is accompanying his Grace into 
the sweetstuff shop close to the Christopher? 
He is quite as well dressed as the Duke. His 
skin is as white. He is, on the whole, hand- 
somer. Any IsTorman blood there, I wonder ? 
l^ot a bit of it. Urchin number two is Dickey 
Brumstitch, and his father is an eminent army- 
tailor and money-lender in Maddox Street, Han- 
over Square. Give me a healthy baby, vaccinated 
and so forth, and let me choose his nurses and 
governesses, and direct his park-airings, and put 
him to tutors, and send him to Eton, and I will 
undertake to make a little duke out of a little 
beggar's brat. 

It is the diet, my dear sir, and the change of 
air, and the pony exercise, and the fawning and 
flattering that makes a gentleman, both for good 
and evil, in the " Court-Guide " sense. For, give 
me another baby, and let me poison his mother's 
milk with bad air and scanty food. Let me rear 
him in a Bethnal Green cellar, or give him a 
Hoxton back slum to play about in. Let mo 
teach him to go to the gin-shop when he is four, 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 173 

and to the pawnbroker's when he is six, and to 
the Devil as soon afterwards as is convenient, 
and I will go bail that my recipe is infallible for 
manufacturing a young vagrant or a young 
gar otter out of a young descendant of the Planta- 
genets. 

But to return to the Eton boy in his connec- 
tion with Boodlejack. His outward and visible 
beauties I have already commented upon and 
frankly admitted. As a rule, the Etonian is, be- 
sides, a good-natured, open-handed little fellow, 
and about the worst-taught and worse-behaved 
young cub to be discovered in any part of the 
habitable globe. He is so because the system of 
education under which he is bred is intrinsically 
and hopelessly stupid, false, and rotten. A pack 
of idiots, who know nothing about Eton schools 
and Eton boys, go maundering about the world, 
preaching up the ''manly" and "independent" 
qualities inseparable from the English public 
school system. Manly and independent ! 

Do you know, madam, the first lesson taught 
to your rosy-cheeked boy when he first goes to 
Eton ? It is to tell lies. His whole life ou:t of 
school is one course of shirking and evasion. 
His masters forbid him to cross to the Berkshire 
side of the bridge, or to be seen in a public- 
house. He is continually lurking about the ta- 
verns at Eton, or "Windsor, or Salt Hill, witli 



174 



some of his playmates as outlying scouts to watcii 
for the approach of a master. As he grows big- 
ger, his circle of prohibited pleasures widens. 
The very men — clergymen of the Church of Eng- 
land — who are set over him to teach and train 
him up in the way he should go, are perfectly 
aware of the system of fraud and deception tra- 
ditional in the school. They even connive at it 
by a tacit agreement, that if a boy be caught, 
say, out of bounds, and takes to a hiding-place, 
however flimsy — a sapling or a lamp-post, for in- 
stance — he shall be deemed to be concealed, and, 
although visible as the sun at noon-day to the 
master's eye, shall be held harmless from detec- 
tion and punishment on his naked flesh. 

Is this system at all a "manly and indepen- 
dent" one ? Does it not the rather teach lads to 
deceive their parents, their superiors, their friends 
in after-life ? He who has " chivied " from a mas- 
ter at Eton will not be very thick-skinned as 
to "taking in the governor" about his college 
and his regimental debts. Of the " manly and 
independent " elements to be found in flogging 
and in fagging, I will only say thus much : that as 
regards fagging, I was brought up in a school 
where there were a thousand boys ; tliat I went 
into it a little boy and a weak boy ; and that if 
any bigger boy had presumed, on his size or his 
strength, to bully or to make a fag of me, I 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 175 

wouldj failing redress from the school authorities, 
have gone out and bought a pistol, and blown 
the bully's brains out, 

"With respect to the maintenance in a profess- 
edly aristocratic school of a brutal and degrad- 
ing punishment, which has been banished from 
parish-schools and workhouses, I have only to 
remark, that (as I suppose) whatever is, is right ; 
and that if it be right that the basis of English 
aristocratic public-school education should be, for 
priests of the Christian religion to instil into little 
Christian boys an accurate knowledge of the 
beastly amours of heathen gods and goddesses 
by scourging their backs with birchen rods, I for 
one am not in the least astonished to find bishops 
of the same religion turning deists and blasphe- 
mers, and coming all the way from the Cape of 
Good Hope to tell us that the I^oachian deluge 
is " unhistorical," and the Books of Moses nothing 
but supposes. It is all of a piece, and will be 
till lies cease to be respectable, and impostures 
cease to be institutions. 

I am not inclined to think that my dog Boodle- 
jack held views quite so uncompromising. He 
had not, probably, troubled his honest pate at all 
on the Etonian question. He had merely learnt 
from his doggish companions that, when Eton 
boys made their appearance about the farm, they 
were to be barked atj and if possible, bitten. I 



176 BREAKFAST IN BED; OR, 

am not responsible for setting the initiative in 
this stern code. 

My landlord had been an Eton boy himself ; 
but he found a love for the antique spires incom- 
fpatible Avith the preservation of peace and quiet- 
ness on his farm. The young gentlemen from 
Eton were in the habit of coming across from the 
playing-fields and making playful raids on his 
property. 

These blithe young moss-troopers would tram- 
ple down his crops, play Old Gooseberry with 
his turnips, drive his cows half crazy by flicking 
them with twisted pocket-handkerchiefs, stone 
his ducks, chase his pigs, burst into his dairy, 
and romp with his dairy-maids. So, whenever 
he had a chance, he set the dogs upon them ; and 
when he hadn't, he would rush after them him 
self with a cart- whip, seize them in flagrant de- 
lict of trespass, and compel them to give up their 
names, which in good time were forwarded to Dr. 
Goodford, the head-master. I don't think he 
often took much by this part of his motion, as 
the boys — and small blame to them — usually 
trusted more to their imagination than to their 
memory for facts when interpellated. 

A flnetime this was for the dog Boodlejack. 
He had no fear of being held a trespasser, and 
might wag his tail, and come " flying all abroad,'^ 
with his four legs very wide apart, over the best 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE BHEETb 177 

part of five hundred acres. He grew in size and 
beauty and strength, and was the admiration of 
all beholders ; always excepting, I need scarcely 
say, the people he bit. The baker, for instance, 
didn't like him. He had had a triangitlar piece 
out of his leg. The laundress abhorred him. He 
had unlaced her boots for her and galled her 
heels many a time. But his most determined 
enemy w^as the village shoemaker. He was a 
shoemaker who undertook repairs ; well, not to 
put too fine a point on it, he was a cobbler. A 
pair of boots of mine had been sent to this 
worthy Crispin to be mended, and he kept 
them twenty-seven days. It wasn't Easter-time ; 
there was no fair or wake, fatal to sutorial in- 
dustry, about. The household grew anxious, and 
Crazy Jane was despatched to Crispin to ask 
about my boots. 

He pointed them out on a shelf, bright and 
natty, the perfection of cobblering. 

" They've been done this fortnight," he said, 
moodily. 

" Then why haven't you brought them back ?" 
quoth Crazy Jane. 

" Ain't they're a dawg up there at the Court?" 
asked Crispin, with darkling visage. 

" Well, just a bit of a pi^ippy," was the 
reply. 

" A bit of a puppy !" Crispin repeated, with 

8* 



178 BREAKFAST IN BEDj OR, 

indignant scorn—" a roaring lion ! /know him. 
He 'aye a bitten my Mariar Ann. He 'ave a 
bitten my James. He 'ave anigli swallered up 
my poor little blactand-tan tarrier Gyp, which 
he did no more than pass the time of day to the 
wicked, fearocious beast. He don't bite me. 
'Ere's Mr. S.'s boots, and you may take 'em 'ome. 
If you've brought the money, you may leave it ; 
and if you haven't, never mind about it, if it's 
till next Christmas. I'll mend Mr. S.'s boots ; 
but I'm bio wed if I'll come anigh that there' 
dawg." 

I believe the cobbler's bill for repairing my 
boots has since been paid. 

It was likewise about this time that Boodle- 
jack, forgetful that his character of a Remark- 
able Dog entailed on him, morally, the respon- 
sibility of being a well-behaved one, began to 
misconduct himself in the most distressing man- 
ner. Of his chasing ducks and chickens about 
the farm-yard, and attaching himself in a friendly 
but importunate manner to the tails of pigs, I am 
not disposed to say anything very severe.. He 
w^as yet but a puppy, and was full of his fun. 
Nor was there, perhaps, anything to be bitterly 
animadverted upon in his running down, garot- 
ting, and slaying a rat very nearly as large as 
himself, and which was so well known to the 
denizens of our colony as to be called, from his 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 179 

length and greyness of whisker, " Old Blucherj" 
and was reported to be a hundred years oldo 
This animal he dragged, after despatching it, to 
the lady of the house, and laid it at her feet as a 
peace-offering; and need of peace he had, in- 
deed, when the numbers of reels of cotton he 
was in the habit of appropriating and essaying 
to devour every week of his life were taken into 
account. 

But the conduct of Boodlejack speedily be- 
came more criminal. He grubbed up all the 
oval and diamond parterres in our garden. He 
made an ollapodrida of all the seeds, and nastur- 
tions came up where geraniums should have 
grown. We had a rosary, probably the prettiest 
and most prolific in the county of Bucks, and 
whose scented treasures were our delight and 
the envy of the whole country-side, Boodlejack 
cried havoc, and let loose the dogs of war — that 
is to say, himself — in the rosary. The brute's 
mouth was always full of rose-leaves, and he 
didn't seem to mind the thorns a bit. For so 
small a dog as he then was, you might have 
imagined, by the devastation he caused, that he 
was Atilla, king of the Huns. His frequent as- 
saults on the legs of strangers made me fearful 
about the law. His predatory propensities were 
perilous. 

He went out one day into the village with 



180 BEEAKFAST IK BED ; OE, 

Crazy Jane to buy some glazed calico. In Elder- 
berry Lane wbom sbonld he meet but our curate's 
wife with her little boy, the latter (aged three) 
carrying a large home-made, open-work jam-tart, 
newly presented to him by an admiring female 
parishioner. The poor child had just begun to 
revel in the delights of the tart, by smearing his 
fingers with the jam, and dabbing his little digits 
on his lips. There is an immensity of delecta- 
tion to be had out of a jam-tart, if you only take 
your time over it. The sight was too much for 
Boodlejack. He bounced up to the curate's 
little boy, frightened him out of his wits with 
one piratical yelp, seized his jam-tart, and swal- 
lowed it, as though it had been a lump of 
dripping. 

Mrs. Curate was dreadfully irate. She didn't 
faint, but she essayed to beat Boodlejack with 
her parasol. 

"The nasty ugly brute has eaten the dear 
child's tart !" she cried, in doleful indignation. 

"When up spoke Crazy Jane, a young woman 
who adores Boodlejack, and is not distinguished 
for great reticence of tongue. 

" He ain't nasty !" she cried. " He's washed 
twice a week. He ain't ugly ! He's a beauty, 
he is. And as for eating the tart, there's two- 
pence, and I wonder he didn't eat you P^ 

Of course we reproved Crazy Jane when this 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 181 

conversation was reported to iis. As for Boodle- 
jack, his misdeeds, it was admitted on all hands, 
merited sterner reprehension. The rosary pecca- 
dilloes were bad enough ; but to be wanting in 
respect to an offshoot of the Church of England 
— that was unpardonable. Boodlejack was sen- 
tenced to be tied up ; and a messenger was de- 
spatched to the village to buy him a chain and a 
kennel. 

The gyves and a prison-house for him were pro- 
cured, and Boodlejack entered npon new condi- 
tions of existence. He howled at first, but speed- 
ily found consolation. He took to digging a 
grave with his paws by the side of his house, as 
though he had been a Trappist, and buried favor- 
ite bits of fat and bones of more than ordinary 
gristly succulence there. 

He pined a little after the kitchen, whither he 
had been in the habit of repairing for the purpose 
of trying and smelling the joints as they went 
round on the spit, and unless restrained by Crazy 
Jane, of licking them. He found he could no 
longer bite people, but took it out in barking. 
He submitted to be called — in a slightly sarcastic 
tone — " poor old fellow," and " good doggy," by 
the postman, on whose calves, in bygone times, 
he had made many exemplary indentations. Per- 
haps the bitterest humiliation he had to endure 
was in the visits of Wee, the cat — a. ginger-col^ 



182 



ored torn-tiger, addicted to fowling, ratting, field- 
mousing, and other ont-door sports — wlio had 
formerly been a mere ball of fur for Boodlejack 
to toss about and trample on, but who w^ould 
now come for an hour or two every day and sit 
in the sun over against Boodlejack's kennel, just 
out of the reach of his paws, eyeing him with 
sly and demure glances of malicious content- 
ment, as though to say, " Aha ! you'll worry a 
poor ginger cat's life out, you will ? How do 
you like a straw^ bed and a chain, eh ?" 

I don't think Boodlejack minded either much. 
He used to break his chain about three times a 
week, and essay to swallow some of the links. As 
for the kennel, although it was ten times his size, 
he very soon managed to drag it about after him. 
In the intervals, too, between the fracture of his 
fetters and their being mended, or new ones pro- 
cured, he was master of the situation ; for he 
laughed at cord, and would have gnawed a cable 
through in half an hour. 

At such times he would lead the domestic ani- 
mals a sad life, and again toss Wee up in the air, 
as the cow with the crumpled horn did the dog 
in the ballad ; but it w^as very pleasant, never- 
theless, to see him gambolling on the lawn with 
a little boy who is now at school, knocking him 
down, and rolling him over, and barking 
furiously at the youngster, but in his wildest 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 183 

moments refraining from doing Mm the sliglitest 
hurt. 

We have all grown older now, and sadder. I 
have given up the house, and live in a grim town 
brick-barn, where there are neither rats nor roses. 
And Boodlejack is pining in a back-yard, till I 
can find heart of grace to get out of this ab- 
horred London again, and let the big dog have 
his fling. 



184f BREAKFAST IN BED; OE, 



OIT WHAT PEOPLE SHOULD HAYE FOR 
BEEAKFAST. 

At last ! After many months' beating about 
the bush, we come to the point ; to a plain, prac- 
tical, tangible issue. The last excuse for digres- 
sion or desultory disquisition is taken away. If 
a man can't devote himself to the topic of break- 
fast while he is Breakfasting in Bed, of what use 
is it his breakfasting, or being in bed at all? 
What, indeed ! save, perhaps, that he should go 
to sleep ; which may be, after all, a more sensi- 
ble manner of employing his time in a natural 
place of rest, than that of grumbling at a matu- 
tinal meal he should properly have partaken of 
in the parlor, or philosophising between the sheets 
when he should have been penning moral essays 
at his desk. 

'' On what people should have for breakfast ?" 
Why didn't I grapple with that most important 
and little understood question last September? 
By this time I might have helped to clear away 
some mists of prejudice, to fish up some treacher-- 
ously submerged torpedo of sophistry, to dredge 
away some bar of ignorance, to clear some chan- 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 185 

nel leading into the harbor of truth, to mitigate 
a nuisance, and to inaugurate a reform. Or, very 
probably, I might have done nothing whatever 
of the kind ; and instead of rendering a service 
to the cause of comfort and common sense, merely 
stirred up a malignant controversy and provoked 
a fruitless discussion. To err is human ; with the 
best intentions we ofttimes come to grief. 

Look at the Eight Honorable William Ewart 
Gladstone and his proposition for licensing club- 
houses as though they were gin-shops. The right 
honorable gentleman persuaded himself, no doubt, 
that he w^as doing an uncommonly clever stroke 
of business, and giving to his financial scheme of 
'63 a brilliant gloss as a " poor man's budget." 
'' I'll take the Clubs," he said to himself (of course 
in Attic Greek). " The reproach of there being 
one law for the rich and another for the poor, 
shall be heard no longer. What is sauce for the 
goose shall be sauce for the gander. The equi- 
poise of justice shall be established between St. 
James's and St. Giles's." So he claps seventeen 
pounds ten and five per cent, for liquor, and three 
pounds ten and five per ditto for tobacco license 
en to Pall Mall, and rubs his hands at the thought 
of "Whitechapel and Bethnal Green falling into 
ecstasies at his impartiality ; and, behold, the 
right honorable gentleman pleases nobody ! 

^^It is a disgraceful imposition," yells St. 



186 BREAKFAST IN BED ; OR, 

James's, in a rage ; " it is a petty piece of 
tyranny, and Gladstone ought to be ashamed of 
himself. We don't sell wines, liquors, beer, or 
tobacco. We buy our own port, and our own 
cognac, and our own cigars out of our own funds, 
and don't want a licence to divide that which is 
our own among ourselves." 

" It's all a something sham," mutters St. 
Giles's, surlily. " It's so much dust thrown in a 
cove's eyes. Mr. Gladstone he don't mean for to 
let the Peelers rummage about the Clubs ; he 
ain't going to shut 'em during the hours of der- 
vine service. He don't mean for to put an end 
to card-playing (and for precious high stakes, 
too) or to Darby sweeps among the nobs : and 
there's to be one law for the Clubs, and another 
for the ' Pig and Tinder-Box.' " Combined 
chorus of " He's a 'umbug and a do," from 
Whitechapel ; and, " He has violated every 
pledge he ever gave to his order," from Pall 
Mali 

St. James's cuts Mr. Gladstone when he ven- 
tures to show himself at the Carlton, and sends 
him to Coventry if he puts in an appearance at 
the U. U. ; and St. Giles's sneers at him as " a 
'igh feller as gammons coves that he likes to do 
what's low." 

Such is not unfrequently the fate of very 
clever and brilliant statesmen, who forget that 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 187 

fluent rhetoric and specious casuistry are often 
swamped for the want of a little candor and a 
little sincerity. 

I am writing at the risk of pleasing nobody ; 
but I passionately entreat you to believe that I 
am both candid and sincere, and that on the 
topic of Breakfast in Bed, at least you shall hear 
nothing from me but words of honesty. 

I went the other day to an eminent medical 
man, and he, being sensibly of opinion that the 
question of diet was of more importance than 
that of pills or potions, asked me what I was in 
the habit of taking for breakfast. 

I answered : " At present, and as a rule, noth- 
ing but a cup of tea and the newspapers ; and 
equally, as a rule, I can't get through either of 
them. But in bygone days I used to make a very 
excellent breakfast." 

" What on ?" my medico searchingly inquired. 

" Well," I returned, " I used to eat a mutton- 
chop, or a rump-steak, or a good plateful from a 
cold joint, or a couple of eggs broiled on bacon, 
or a haddock, or a mackerel, or some pickled 
salmon, or some cold veal-and-ham pie, or half a 
wild duck, or a devilled partridge, wdth plenty 
of bread-and-butter, or toast, or muffins, and per- 
haps some anchovy sauce, or potted char, or 
preserved beef; the whole washed down by a 
couple of cups of tea or coffee"- 



188 BEEAKFAST IK BED ; OR5 

He stopped me with a gesture of amazement, 
and a look of horror : '' I y/onder you didn't say 
a dish of chocolate and a glass of curagoa, by way 
of a wind up/' he exclaimed. 

" ITo," I replied with modest ingenuousness ; 

I used to wind up with a pipe of bird's-eye. I 
didn't Breakfast in Bed in those days, and my 
digestion was pretty good, I thank you." 

'^ And after these astounding confessions, you 
come to me," went on my doctor, " and grumble 
about your liver! I am astonished that you 
have any left. You have been living in a man- 
ner that would kill half a dozen bricklayers' 
laborers. But there is time to reform. It is not 
yet too late. You should take for breakfast a 
very small quantity of dry toast, uniformly 
browned, and preferably without butter ; or if 
you do hanker after adipose matter, the very 
thinnest possible veneer of butter upon it. Then, 
if you have appetite enough for it, I would 
advise you to take a small quantity of bacon cut 
from the back, not the streaky bacon, and toasted 
before the fire, until all the oil has been expelled 
from the tissue. After that — you say you can't 
drink tea ?" 

I stated that I could drink it by pailfuls, and 
was madly fond of it, but that it made me dis- 
tressingly nervous. .^ 

'' Coffee," he pursued, " is heating, unless you 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEIT THE SHEETS. 189 

have a minimum of the very finest Oriental 
berry, scientifically roasted and ground, to a 
maximum of the purest milk ; and such things 
are diflicult to obtain in London, or even in 
England. Can you drink homoeopathic cocoa?" 

I answered in a spirit similar to that which is 
said to have prompted the response of the young 
Irish gentleman when he was asked if he could 
play the fiddle ; I said that I had no doubt of 
being able to drink homoeopathic cocoa, if I 
tried. 

" Then, try it," said my medico, " and come 
to me in three weeks' time." 

I do not lose a moment in admitting that my 
adviser's breakfast 7}ienu was an admirably sensi- 
ble one ; but I very much doubt whether I 
should not have gone raving mad if I had 
adhered without variation to a repast consisting 
of toasted bacon, dry toast, and homoeopathic 
cocoa. I tried it for a time, then gave it up. 
Bacon is a very nice thing. It is cruel and 
unjust, by incessantly consuming it, to have at 
last to loathe and abhor it. I tried my hardest 
to think it wholesome and appetizing ; but to no 
purpose. I found myself rapidly approaching 
the detestation stage, and I don't mean to 
have any more bacon for breakfast for three 
months. 

I have scarcely any need to point out that 



190 BREAKFAST IN BED: OE, 

variety in what you have for breakfast is the 
prime essential to enable you to eat any break- 
fast at all. Man was not meant to live on 
bread — nay, nor on toasted bacon, nor homoeo- 
pathic cocoa — alone. If you don't vary his diet, 
if you don't give him something by way of a 
change, he will pine away, or refuse his victuals, 
and grow morose and refractory as a wild 
animal. 

We have heard a great outcry within these 
latter days against the assumed luxurious man- 
ner in which criminals are fed in gaol. The 
rogues, it appears, live on savory soup, thickened 
with meal, and seasoned with vegetables, salt, 
and pepper. They have porridge and gruel, 
with milk and rich molasses, potatoes, boiled 
beef (free from bones) on stated days, and on 
others (the pampered Sybarites !) they are actu- 
ally regaled with hot suet-pudding. 

Has it any plums in it, I wonder ? Only fancy 
giving '^ plum-duff" to garotters, and burglars, 
and pickpockets, and the atrocious scoundrels 
who have been convicted, under the new Poach- 
ing Act, of being found in possession of a rabbit's 
skin, or a pheasant's net. 'Now persons of prac- 
tical experience, whether they be professed 
physiologists or not, are perfectly aware of these 
facts : that if you deprive a man of his liberty, 
and make him work at tasks uncongenial to his 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 191 

tastes, and subject him to a grinding and inquisi- 
torial discipline, and feed him besides on bread 
and water, you will very soon drive him to 
idiocy, to murdering his gaoler, or to dashing his 
brains out against the walls of his cell. 

A very short term of such a punishment is one 
of the most terrible to conceive in the whole 
arsenal of penal inflictions. In some cases it may 
be salutary ; but, imposed for any lengthened 
period, it amounts simply to constructive murder. 
A criminal would infinitely prefer a thousand 
lashes to three weeks at Holloway or Wands- 
worth on " low diet." 

Silly and irrational people, who can't see far- 
ther than the tips of their noses, think that 
because hard labor and the starvation system are 
efficacious when tried for a few days, criminals 
should be subjected to such a doom for months, 
for years, or for life. No prisoners could live, 
and no prison-authorities could enforce such a 
system in perpetuity. 

Gaolers may look stern enough, but they are 
not vindictive or hard-hearted enough to meet 
all the requirements of the new school of philan- 
thropy. The neo-philanthropists are indignant 
because the food is of good quality and is well 
cooked. Do they expect the county magistrates 
to insert advertisements in the papers, running, 
" "Wanted, a dishonest contractor ;" " Wanted, a 



192 BREAKFAST IK BED; OB, 

scoundrelly carcass-butcher, who will supply so 
many hundred-weight of offal, various bones, 
and meat generally unfit for human food ;" 
"Wanted, an idiot who can't cook;" "Wanted, 
a jackass who can turn a well-built prison-kitchen 
topsy-turvy ?" Wherever you find order, clean- 
liness, a full supply of proper utensils, efficiency 
in the persons employed, and reasonably good 
qualities in the provisions supplied, there, I take 
it, must there be rations of well-cooked food, 
which those who know nothing about the matter 
term " luxurious." " Oh," cry the neo-philanthro- 
pists, "but we don't want any cooking at all for^ 
burglars and garotters. Feed the wretches once 
a day upon bread-and-water ; and if they 
grumble, flog them well." I humbly submit 
that, since the world began, a diet exclusively 
composed of bread-and-water for persons in cap- 
tivity has never been adopted, as a ^permanency^ 
save where it was the deliberately-designed or 
avowed object to kill the captive. On the conti- 
nent of Europe, in the most barbarously-managed 
convict-prisons, the galley-slaves are allowed to 
purchase articles of food, in addition to the 
rations allowed them by the State. TiiQ/orgats 
of Toulon are fed on soup and beans and wine — • 
all execrable in quality, no doubt, but still pre- 
serving them from despair by offering them some 
variety to an eternal regimen of ammunition- 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 193 

bread and muddy water. In the prisons of 
England, before John Howard's time, those 
incarcerated who had money were suffered to 
buy their own provisions, liquors, and tobacco, 
and really lived in a state somewhat resembling 
luxury, though of a coarse, riotous, and bestial 
kind. Those ^^ho had no money, literally rotted 
and died of inanition. Suppose the bread-and- 
water — and nothingbut bread-and- water — system 
established permanently in a modern gaol. Do 
you know what the result would be after a 
few weeks' trial of the precious bill-of-fare ? 
The prisoners would become living skeletons ; on 
their knees and under their arms would rise 
dreadful glandular swellings. Their blood would 
turn to water, and that to an inconceivably 
horrible putrefaction. Try it, my lords and 
gentlemen. Try it, my neo -philanthropists. But, 
first of all, try the bread-and-water diet on your- 
selves, and tell me how you like it. 

There is a prison at Munich where they give 
the best-behaved convicts, from tune to time, a 
pint of beer. That mawkish draught of Baerisch' 
Bier^ attainable, perliaps, once a month, is found 
io be the very highest and most eflieacious incen- 
tive to exemplary conduct. At Gibraltar and 
Bermuda they used to give the felons a stick of 
Cavendish tobacco every week, and allow them 
a certain number of minutes every evening before 

9 



194 BREAKFAST IN BED ; OE^ 

gun-fire to " blow their baccy." I liave not the 
slightest doubt that this evening pipe has pre- 
vented many a rautiny and stifled many a mur- 
der in embryo. Practice has never been, and 
never will be on this side eternity, so remorseless 
and so vindictive as theory. 

Thus the gentlemen who govern the victual- 
ling-department in prisons being, in nine cases 
out of ten, sensible, humane, and experienced 
men, who know what prisoners want and what 
they do not want much better than outside 
theorists, vary the breakfasts, dinners, and sup- 
pers of the unhappy persons confided to their 
charge to as great an extent as the exceedingly 
restricted dietary table will allow them to do. 
It is very easy to prate about convicts being 
pampered and coddled. It is also occasionally 
convenient to sneer at Sir Joshua Jebb and the 
Home Secretary, and drive them out into a wil- 
derness of vituperation and misrepresentation, as 
scapegoats for our own shortcomings and blunder- 
ing in time gone by; but I fancy that a couple 
of months' experience in the cell of a convict- 
prison would convince not a few of the virtuously- 
indignant-against-prisoners'-indulgence class, that 
the so-called pampering and coddling and luxury 
amount in the aggregate to a bare sufficiency of 
very plain, coarse, and distasteful food. 

1^0 beer, no gin, no fried fish, no baked Tor^-^ 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 195 

shire-pudding, no hot eel-soup, no baked potatoes, 
no tripe, no cow-heel, no liver and bacon, no 
singed sheep's-head : a pitiless divorce from all 
these things, which, to the criminal tribes, are 
held eminently toothsome and savory. These 
deprivations are, to the felonious mind, ill com- 
pensated for by allotted rations of the simplest 
character, and from which spicy seasonings, and 
especially gravy — that rich juice so dear to all 
humanity — are inexorably banished. Cocoa-nibs 
may be all very nutritious and wholesome ; but, 
ah ! what are they to rum and milk ? Molasses 
may be a comfort ; but what is treacle in com- 
parison with the dainties dispensed by the street- 
pieman ? 

We find among free men — among those classes 
whose members are not periodically locked up by 
the country for the country's good — that the 
want of variety in meals, but especially as re- 
gards breakfast, is surely productive of numerous 
eviis to the body politic. Take schools, for in- 
stance. From year's end to year's end the hap- 
less infants in academies for young gentlemen, or 
seminaries for young ladies, are condemned to a 
changeless round of thick bread-and buU er and 
sky-blue milk-and-water. 

In a very few educational establishments, I am 
told — not one in half a hundred probably — the 
weakest of weak tea is served out ; a mournful 



196 BREAKFAST m BED ; OK, 

decoction, in whicli luke-warm water preponder- 
ates, in which the taste of brown sugar is faintly 
felt, but in which the infusion of tea-leaves is in- 
finitesimal. Some spravs and buds of a strangely 
herbaceous character float mournfully on the 
surface of this so-called tea ; and the entire bev- 
erage has a depressing and enfeebling effect on 
the consumer. ITevertheless such tea — albeit it 
is but a scornful misnomer so to qualify it — is 
reckoned a high and haughty luxury, to be re- 
joiced in only in establishments of the highest 
class ; and you may be tolerably certain that 
the generous preceptors who give tea to their 
scholars do not forget to put on something 
extra for the nse of the teapot in their half-yearly 
bills. 

But that bread-and-butter knows no change. 
It may be that it is part of the private educa- 
tional code to compel the housekeeper to cut the 
young people's tartines of an unwieldy and al- 
most unmasticatory density. I suppose that it is 
good for their little healths that the bread should 
be stale. "You are not quite so insane as to eat 
new bread ?" my medical adviser said to me ; but 
I forgot to introduce the query in its proper place. 
I might have told him, but I didn't, that I always 
ate new bread, and suffered accordingly. 

There would be an end, of course, of all school- 
discipline if any but the parlor-bbai'ders and the 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 197 

teachers were permitted to eat tliin bread-and- 
butter, and a mutiny w^ould be the infallible 
result of mufiins. Of course the gradations of 
authority must be marked — in no place with 
more definite force than in a school. 

When a child is decently behaved, he gets 
thick bread with very little butter on it. When 
he is naughty, he has dry bread, or, under cer- 
tain circumstances of disgrace, no bread at all ; 
but, at the other end of the scale, his pastors and 
masters, his good and wise schoolmaster or school- 
mistress, revel in buttered toast ; delicious cubes 
of spongy matter; Rcik.at lahouni^ '^ lumps of 
delight," through every pore of which the olea- 
ginous glue oozes. 'Tis a food for angels. 

When I was at school in England, for a very 
short time, I am happy to say, the principal, with 
a touching humility, used to take his meals with 
us. He and his wife and daughter sat at a cross 
table : we had the immutable bread-and-butter 
and sky-blue ; they had bacon, coffee, muffins, 
"buttered toast. How often has my young soul 
yearned to make an onslaught on that well-filled 
upper end of the board — '-groaning beneath all 
the delicacies of the season," as the reporters are 
accustomed to say of the annual dinner of the 
Sparkenhoe Farmers' Club — ar.d carry off the 
middlemost layer of that mount of buttered toast, 
even at the risk of being hanged, expelled, or 



198 



OR, 



thraslied witHn an incli of my life for the rash 
and desperate deed ! 

I knew a schoolmaster once who, at the end of 
each half, and on the mornmg of the day they 
went home for the holidays, nsed to give his boys 
an egg for breakfast. Was it in pure liberality 
of soul that the donative was bestowed ? or was 
it, the rather, the offspring of an artful ricse on 
the part of the astute pedagogue ? Did he think 
to mollify obdurate boys, to condone bygone 
grievances, to put a plaster on wheals that were 
yet green (or black-and-blue) on boyish limbs, or 
to stifle nascent complaints which, to anxious 
and inquiring parents, he apprehended might be 
made ? . I never knew ; but it is certain that he 
gave his boys eggs with their thick bread-and- 
butter and their sky-blue, twice a year. The 
stratagem — ^if it was a stratagem — the generosity 
— if generosity indeed it was — were both thrown 
away. 

Schoolboys are lamentably ungrateful. My 
friend's boys laughed his eggs to scorn. They 
imputed to him the Vv'orst and most interested 
motives. They declared the eggs to be musty. 
They forebore to eat, but pocketed them, and 
pelted one another with them in the playground. 
I remember a boy being caned, five minutes be- 
fore he went home to his fond parents, for secret- 
ing an egg, on which happening inadvertently to 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 199 

sit, he sqiiaslied it, to the subversion of the good 
order of the establishment and the material in- 
jury of his pantaloons. The egg-trick ended in 
inglorious failure. 

I think that if you were to canvass a large 
number of intelligent boys, you would find the 
majority against bread-and-biitter a very numer- 
ous and decided one. For cake — plum or seedy 
— they have an ungovernable affection; bread 
and cheese even they will not spurn at ; of pud- 
dings and pies they will devour, unless judiciously 
checked, incalculable quantities; but to bread- 
and-butter, unless driven by the pangs of abso- 
lute hunger, they are generally inclined to give 
a contemptuous go-by. 

I was formerly aware of a boarding-school, 
where the morning and evening allowance to each 
boy was one entire slice cut right round a quartern 
loaf, and divided into four cubes or chunks, 'Now 
there was a rule in the school, that anybody 
having eaten his allowance, and craving more, 
should, on rising, clearing his voice, and asking 
deferentially, and in the German language, if he 
might have another piece of bread-and-butter, be 
entitled to an additional chunk. I think the for- 
mula ran thus: '^ Ilerr Schlaghintern^^ — this 
wasn't the schoolmaster's name ; but 'twill serve 
— ^'wollen Sie so gut seyn mir noch ein Stuch 
Butterbrod zu geben /" The condition was not a 



200 BEEAKFAST IN BED; OR, 

very onerous one, and all the boys in the school 
learnt German ; yet in the course of three halves, 
I only knew the extra chunk to be claimed by 
four boys. 

f Big Jack Lazenby, whose father was a Baro- 
net, and who was a fool — ^bless his honest, soft- 
hearted memory ! — spoke up for it, because an- 
other boy had made him a bet that he couldn't 
utter four words in German without making 
three blunders. He made two ; but these lapses 
were sufficient to deprive him of the coveted 
chunk. Little Harry Skipwith won it easily ; 
but he gave it away to his next neighbor (Harry 
was the boy who had a rich cake once a fort- 
night, and always brought five guineas to school, 
at the commencement of a new half, as pocket- 
money). Simon Dollamore, the rich City man's 
son (he is now a richer man than his father), was 
the densest of dunces at German ; but by labori- 
ous plodding he contrived to master the mystic 
sentence, and having obtained the chunk over 
and above, sold it for a halfpenny. The com- 
mercial operation was brought to light, and 
Simon Dollamore, besides suffering corporal an- 
guish on the palms of his hands from a ruler, was 
informed no further proficiency he might attain 
in the Teutonic tongue would avail in his obtain- 
ing extra bread-and-butter. The fourth claimant 
was that luckless Gumbyle, whose father was 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 201 

always bankrupt, and consequently neglected to 
pay for the board and education of liis son. 
Gumbyle was egged-on one afternoon to rise and 
claim the bread-and-butter bonus ; but he hadn't 
got further than '' wollen Sie so gut seyn^'^ when 
our revered preceptor marched up to him, box- 
ed his ears, wondered at his impudence, and 
sternly bade him sit down again and hold his 
tongue. 

If you come to the opposite sex, you will find 
quite another feeling with regard to bread-and- 
butter. I don't believe that any of the stories 
told about the ravenous fondness of school-girls 
for Butterlrods are exaggerated. I know a lady 
who went to school at Kensington, and there the 
servants put the bread-and-butter — when they 
had cut it — for tea into a large clothes-basket to 
be ' handed round, and even then the clothes- 
basket would be found all too small. I hope I 
shall not be contradicted by physiologists when 
I assert, that in the majority of instances girls 
have a far more voracious appetite than boys. 
From nine to thirteen a girl would much sooner 
have a slice of bread-and-butter than a hoop, a 
doll, or a skipping-rope. This is why discreet 
governesses are able entirely to dispense with 
corporal punishment in girls' schools. A boy 
doesn't care much about being deprived of a 
meal ; a girl does. If you were to ask her whe- 

9* 



202 BItEAKFAST ITf BED ; OK, 

tlier slie preferred having her ears boxed or her 
knuckles rapped to going without her tea, she 
would answer — supposing her reply to be per- 
fectly candid — in the affirmativ^e. Starvation is 
a quiet, genteel, unobtrusive punishment. It 
causes no frenzied struixsrles, no violent howlino;. 
It is very cheap ; and the establishment saves 
money by the culprits who are put an fain sec. 

There comes a time, however, when we are 
our own masters and mistresses, and when it bo- 
comes our, often grievous, duty to order our own 
breakfasts. The question, '' "What shall we have 
for breakfast F' is a far more difficult one to solve 
than " What sliall we have for dinner?" "We 
can appeal to the cook, to Soycr, or Francatelli, 
or Dr. Kitchener, or Lady Clutterbuck, or to the 
wife of onr bosom. "We can remember some of 
the dainties of which we have partaken at friends' 
houses, or at places of public resort during the 
past week ; or, at all events, we can throw our- 
selves on chops and steaks, or announce our in- 
tention of dining out. But breakfast brings a far 
different series of influences into play. The ques- 
t^'on is a momentous one, and j^ou are easily 
stranded. If you are a family man, I will not 
assume that you can be, save in cases of extreme 
rarity, such a despicable and heartless ruffian as 
to breakfast away from home. 

I know there are some men, lost to all sense 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 203 

of domestic propriety — monsters in linman form. 
— who, witli a stony cynicism and unblusMng 
hardihood, will abandon their Lares and Penates 
even while — the wretches ! — ^the kettle is sputter- 
ing on the hob and the urn simmering on the ta- 
ble. These bold bad men will go shamelessly 
down to their club and breakfast. Their insolent 
plea is, that an obsequious waiter will at once 
pour into their ears a copious catalogue of appe- 
tising things that can be had for breakfast — ^boil- 
ed, grilled, stewed, devilled, and cold ; that eve- 
rything is of first-rate quality, and served with 
exquisite neatness and admirable expedition ; that 
all the newspapers, ready cut, are at hand ; that 
no single knocks from duns are possible ; and that 
a much better breakfast than can be had at home 
costs much less money than it would among the 
Lares and Penates. 

Should you meet, my son, with any sucli 
hardened men, follow my counsel, and avoid 
them. Their ways lead as surely to perdition as 
a latch-key and a cigar-case lead to the unfa- 
thomable abyss of Sir Cresswell CresswelFs court 
and woe unutterable. 



204r BEEAKFAST IK BED ; OB, 



0^ HAYING SEEK A GHOST AT HOX- 

TOJSr, AND THE VERY DEUCE 

HIMSELF m PAEIS. 

MiSEKY, we all know, makes a man acquainted 
with strange bedfellows ; but the converse, which 
might be snggested to such a proverb, does not 
hold. Strange beds do not always make men 
miserable. The rather, sometimes, are they pro- 
ductive of ease and gratulation to the unaccus- 
tomed sleeper. It is in the nature of mutable 
and capricious man to grow weary of everything 
when its occupation is prolonged. Satisfaction 
begets sameness, and sameness satiety ; and then 
we yawn and toss and tumble restlessly, and at 
last come to curse our day, as Job did. 

Couch us on rose-leaves, and we begin to 
grumble for St. Lawrence's gridiron. Softly 
smother us in eider-down, and, with ungrateful 
shrug, we declare that we should like a heap of 
red-hot coals by way of a change. When St. 
Louis was dying, he caused himself to be stretch- 
ed on a bed of ashes. Was that act of mortifica- 
tion due to pure, virtuous asceticism, think you, 
or to sheer wearinesB of soft feather-beds and 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEK THE SHEETS. 205 

silken hangings? Tliere are seasons when the 
roomiest four-poster, the snuggest Arabian, pall 
upon and disgust ns ; when we would gladly ex- 
change the fluted silk of the alcove for the white- 
washed walls of the hospital dormitory. 

Mattresses, paillasses, and feather-beds, bol- 
sters, pillows, and counterpanes, are all very 
well; but, ah, for the delights of a swinging 
hammock or a camp-bedstead! — ah, for the in- 
vigorating change of a night in the open air, 
with the stars for a canopy, and nothing but a 
buffalo-robe between yourself and mother earth ! 

How glorious it is, for example, to retire to 
rest with a carpet-bag nnder your head, and 
wake np in the morning your cranium a mass 
of abnormal bumps, embossed there by contact 
with subjacent hair-brushes, pomatum-pots, and 
boot-heels ! 

How charming to repose by the bivouac-fire, 
and discover on the morrow that your toes have 
been half burnt off! And the pleasant nights 
when you don't go to bed at all ! — when you 
pace the deck, a cigar between your lips ; or are 
jolted from side to side of a railway carriage ; 
or sink into a troubled slumber in the imveriale 
of a diligence, with your head on tlie shoulder 
of the conditcteur^ who very summarily shakes 
you off every time the coach stops to change 
horses. 



206 



During the whole of the month of June just 
past, I have been sleeping in very strange beds^ 
and eating stranger breakfasts in thcin. I have 
been a wanderer on the face of the earth, and 
have mooned half over Europe. I have drunk 
the waters of unwonted rivers. The Seine I have 
seen, the Marne, the Mense, the Sclieldt, the 
Rhine, the Moselle, and the Necker; yea, and 
the Maine, the Inn, the Adige, the Arno, the Po, 
and the Rhone. 

Several nights, a dozen, perhaps, I have passed 
in my clothes, and without thinking of sleep; 
but on all other occasions I have Breakfasted 
consistently in Bed. It is the fashion in outland- 
ish countries so to do ; at least to consume break- 
fast number one between the sheets. Breakfast 
number two, the dejeuner a la fourchette^ I cau- 
tiously abjure, fearing apoplexy. 

I came abroad, when May was on the wane, 
with tvvo brisk and valiant young Englishmen, 
determined to do at Rome — whither we didn't go 
— as the Romans did, and at Paris as the Paris- 
ians. They astounded and humbled me, an old 
and experienced tra.veller as I deemed myself, 
by their fluent acquaintance with Continental 
customs, especially those relating to eating and 
drinking. 

" Cafe an lait and bread-and-butter in bed at 
8 A.M.J of course,'^ quoth Englishman number 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 207 

one. '^ And then," pursued the second Anglo- 
Saxon, in Joud and strident tone, " at half-past 
twelve or so, we go out to a cqfSj and have our 
regular breakfast — onr dejeuner d la fourchette : 
eggs on the plate, a hiftek aux pommes^ and so 
forth, and a bottle of Bordeaux apiece." 

In tremulous horror I shrunk from this alarm- 
ing programme. Protest I dared not, for my 
Englishmen were stout and strong, and w^ould 
have beaten me ; but I meekly represented that I 
"svas accustomed to consume only two meals a 
day ; that to partake of animal food at noon 
would be about equivalent to signing my death- 
w^arrant; that, in my opinion, after a substantial 
breakfast, a Christian man wanted nothing but 
a crust of bread and a glass of Avine till dinner- 
time ; and that to imbibe the contents of a bottle 
of Bordeaux for lunch would surely cause me to 
spin round like a tee-totum on the Boulevard, or 
commit an aggravated assault on the nearest ser- 
gent de ville. 

" Milksoj^ !" I heard one of my companions 
murmur. " Hypocrite !" muttered the other. 
'' I told you so. Coats of the stomach quite gone. 
Healthy appetite lost for ever. Wants to slink 
out and breakfast by himself on raw artichokes 
and absinthe." 

To clear myself from these cruel aspersions, I 
gave up my point, and fell into their ways, at the 



208 BKEAKFAST OT BED; OK, 

imminent risk of tumbling down with a coup de 
sang. Ye Lars and Lemures, how those two 
young men ate and drank ! And yet they seemed 
none tiie worse for their excesses. I love them 
both, I esteem them both ; but I declare I felt a 
grim satisfaction when they departed from me, 
and left me to continue my journey alone and 
practise a sullen abstemiousness, for which I feel 
none the better. 

So I took to Breakfasting in Bed at any hour 
I chose, and reading in bed, and day-dreaming 
in bed, and talking to myself in bed, and some- 
times groaning in bed, and occasionally, as foreign 
fire-insurances were no concern of mine, smoking 
in bed. Tliere is much virtue in an early morn- 
ing cigarette. If you presumed to smoke in bed 
in England, those who became acquainted with 
your habit would declare you to be a Socinian, 
or a Freethinker, or hint that you poisoned your 
wife, or were on the brink of bankruptcy. But 
tliere are, happily, so many things you can do 
abroad which you cannot do at home. Such, at 
least, has been my experience. There are advan- 
tages pro and privations contra^ I grant. On the 
one hand, you escape from tutelage, from be- 
ing scolded, from being asked what you would 
like for dinner, from receiving penny-post letters 
and morning visits, from being told that the Gas 
has called again, and that the coals are out, and 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 209 

from reading tlie '' Saturday Review " on your 
last literary performance. 

On the other hand, there is no one to ^^ share 
your cup/' or cheer it, or pour it out, or sweeten 
it, or throw it at yon. There is no one to part 
your hair or tie your scarf. Tliere is no one to 
give the soft answer which tnrneth away wrath, 
or to utter the wrathful taunt which tlie soft an- 
swer assuages — sometimes. 

On the whole, I think it a pleas int thing, and 
useful and wholesome, to stay nway now and 
then from your bed and board. 'T's sweet to hear 
the dulcet tones of " Willie, we have missed you," 
on your return ; and if your name doesn't hap- 
pen to be#W^illie, and you don't liear the dulcet 
tones above mentioned, it is, at least, edifying to 
the philosophical mind to discover how comfort- 
ably the world has gone on in your absence, ajid 
liow charmingly people have managed without 
you. ^ 

. This morning I am Breakfasting in Bed at an 
hotel on the Boulevard Poissonnifere, Paris, and 
I cry ''Ha! ha!" over my cccfe cm lait ; for, 
with the consistency of inconsistency, I have by 
this time grown tired of wandering, and strange 
breakfasts, and strange beds, and am longing for 
the old London treadmill, and the old delightful 
condition of always wanting to do what I like 
and never being allowed to do it. I cry " Ha ! 



210 BREAKFAST m BED; OR, 

La !" for this night I am bound to London town, 
no more to leave it till I cross the Atlantic wave, 
the which, for aught I know, may transform 
itself betwixt this and August into the dull 
rolling billow of the leaden-hued Styx. I 
besought my bed-maker, who is of the male per- 
suasion — andj like the majority of his brother 
chambermen, a strong politician, a very civil 
and obliging fellow, and a shameless rogue — I 
besought Antoine to fetch me ^^ Figaro." 

This is Thursday morning, and a new number 
is due. Antoine is Luca fa presto in his inove- 
m-ents — when he's paid to be quick — and with 
celerity he brings me " Figaro " — not the witty 
barber of Seville, but the scarcely Jess witty 
journal non politique of Paris. It is delightful 
reading in bed. I am skimming over the chron- 
igue and the nouvelles a la main when my eye 
lights on the following paragraph : 

'' M. Lambert Thiboust, dramatic author, and 
M. Hostein, ditector of the Theatre du Chatelet, 
have left Paris for London, in order to investi- 
gate a trick {icn true) which is said to have had 
great success on the English stage. "\Ye will say 
nothing of the nature of this trick in order to 
detract from the astonishment which will surely 
be created by its appearance in Paris. N'or as 
yet will we mention the piece in which the said 
trick is to be introduced. It is one of Miss 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN" THE SHEETS. 211 

Aurora's Secrets." {G^est le secret de Miss 
Aurore.) 

Wliat is this wonderful trick? I asked myself. 
Has anybody succeeded in walking into a quart 
bottle, or making the Soho Theatre pay, since I 
•left London ? Have MM. Lambert Thiboust and 
Hostein gone to study the art of trickery under 
Mr. Diana Boucicault ? 

By the way, M. Hostein, your last visit to 
London was not of a very gratifying character. 
Do you remember the year ? It was '48. Do 
you remember the piece you produced at Drury 
Lane Theatre ? It was '^ Monte Christo." Do 
you remember the result ? It was a riot. 

A stormy period was '48. Kings were being 
toppled off their thrones all over Europe, and 
"Monte Christo" was hooted off the stage of old 
Drury in the midst of an uproar to w^hich the 
O. P. row must have been angelic calmness. 

Long I wondered and pondered over this mys- 
terious t7'uc. Had it anything to do with the 
" infamous truck system ?" Could it claim 
kindred with Mr. Gladstone's budget, or Mr. 
Disraeli's policy ? "Was it the bottle-trick, or 
the skeleton-trick, or the globe-of-gold-fish trick 
of our conjurors and pantomimists ? Surely, no. 
Those amusing deceptions are notoriously of 
foreign origin, and we have but taken French 
leave in adapting them on our boards. At last 



212 BREAKFAST IK BED; OR 

I saw a clue, and cried out Eureka. The Secret 
of Miss Aurore ! Why, uuder that queer title 
" Figaro " is now publishing, in a bi-weekly sup- 
plement, a translation of the famous novel of 
"Aurora Floyd ;" and who but the translator told 
me that M. Hostein is about to produce the said 
Secret de Mademoiselle Aurore as a grand 
meloclramic spectacle at the Chatelet, and has 
positively engaged poor old Frederic Lemaitre 
to fill the part of '^ the Softy." The true must be 
the admired Ghost-trick of Professor Pepper and 
Mr. Dircks ; and, with the characteristic hardi- 
hood and scornful independence of the unities 
of proprietors and the probabilities of French 
dramatic authors, M. Lambert Thiboust is about 
to present the Parisian public with Aurora Floyd 
and a Ghost into the bargain. Poor Miss Aurora ! 
poor Mrs. J. Mellish ! Who would ever have 
thought of that vivacious young lady addicting 
herself to spirit-rapping ? 

Kendering due justice to the genius and enter- 
prise of MM. Lambert Thiboust and Hostein, 
and only marvelling as to the particular part of 
Miss Braddon's romance into which they could 
contrive to pop Professor Pepper's Ghost, my 
vagrant thoughts revert to Hoxton town, in the 
borough of Finsbury, England. 'Twas there, 
last May, I saw the real, Pepperian, hair-stand- 
on-end-compelling Ghost. But five weeks since 1 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 213 

It seems an age to me ; and even, dramatically 

speaking, it seems a year. 

Theatres and ti:ieatres have I beheld since Mr. 
Lane gave me a box for the Britannia. Tlie 
Paris Grand Opera, the Cirqne, and the Chatelet, 
I took first. Next came the clean, commodious 
theatre at Frankfort-on-the-Main, wliere I heard 
Meyerbeer's " Dinorah " and Gounod's " Faust." 
Tlien I dropped down to Munich, and saw " Guil- 
laumeTell" from the stalls of the magnificent 
Maximilian Theatre. Then the Genius of Vaga- 
bondism wafted me througli the Tyrol, and down 
to Yerona, and landed me at Yenice; where, alas ! 
I found the sumptuous Fenice shut up these five 
years, the San Benedetto doomed also to chronic 
closing, and only one little trumpery dramatic 
temple open, the Teatro Malibran, admission 
to the boxes thirty kreutzers (abou.t eightpence). 

What do you think they were playing at the 
Teatro Malibran ? II Segreto di Miladi Audlei — 
'^ Lady Audley's Secret !" Li the official Gazette 
of Yenice — a stern journal, full of rugose decrees 
fromYienna, and alarming police-edicts — I found 
ihefeidlleton to be an Italian translation of an 
English novel. For completeness' sake, it should 
have been either '^ Aurora Floyd " or " Lady 
Audley's Secret;" but it happened, for a wonder, 
to be something else. It was only Mrs. Henry 
Wood's " East Lynne." 



214: BEEAKFAST IK BEB ; OE, 

Back, back to Hoxton, fugitive remembrances. 
Hoxton! where is Hoxton? I declare I don't 
know. ^'Hear liim!" Hircius and Spungius 
yelp. " Hear the base npstart plead ignorance 
as to the whereabouts of Ploxton. Hear him try- 
to ape the dead cjnic who asked where Russell 
Square was. Hoxton, and be hanged to him ! 
As though he never ate fried fish, or tramped 
about, shoeless, there." "Well, H. and S., I donH 
know where Hoxton is. It is somewhere near 
the City Eoad, I think ; but I have not the least 
idea in what particular locality. 

I wrote to Mr. Lane^ and with his customary 
urbanity he wrote back to say that he should be 
glad to see me at Hoxton. As I was pressed for 
time, and there happened to be a lady in the case 
on the appointed evening, I had a cab from 
Bloomsbury to Hoxton, and I had a cab back ; 
and, from that day to this, I have not been able 
to acquire more than the vaguest and mistiest 
notion of what Hoxton is like, or where it is 
situated, or what are the manners and customs of 
its inhabitants. 

I apprehend, however, that there must be 
several millions of people in Hoxton. The child- 
dren swarm there to such an extent, that had. 
Professor Pepper and Mr. Dircks, C.E., raised 
the ghost of the late Eev. Mr. Malthus in lieu of 
that of the at the Britannia, the spectre of 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 215 

the famous anti-population theorist would have 
turned green with rage at the sight of so many 
human beings promising adolescence. Anti- 
Malthusian doctrines v/ere happily at a discount 
at Mr. Lane's establishment, whither the millions 
(more or less) of Hoxton had on the particular 
May night in question despatched a varied depu- 
tation, a few thousands strong, to see the Ghost. 
There were a great many children in the theatre ; 
but they were all remarkably quiet, hushed to 
stillness probably by apprehension, by anticipa- 
tion of the Phantom. If there were any babies 
in arms among the audience, their mothers and 
nurses must have taken very good care of them ; 
for, from beginning to end of the entertainment, 
I heard not one squall. Perhaps these Hoxtonian 
infants, with a wisdom beyond their years, were 
aware of the sahitary edicts levelled by the 
management against babyhood of a nature so 
vociferous as to interfere with the general com- 
fort of the spectators. Perhaps they stuffed their 
little fists into their little mouths, held their little 
breaths, and cheerfully martyrized themselves, in 
order not to mar the decorous procession of the 
Ghost. At any rate, they were edify ingly un- 
demonstrative ; and if, when they returned home, 
they compensated for their prolonged taciturnity 
by roarings the most deafening and squallings 
the most ear-piercing, small blame to the babies 
of Hoxton, say I. 



216 BEEAKFAST IK BED ; OE^ 

It would be unjust to deny the grown-np por- 
tion of a closely-packed auditory a well-merited 
good word. I am not of those wlio liabitnally 
and glibly compliment the working-classes on 
their " exemplary good behavior," and who think 
it rather a marvelious and phenomenal circum- 
stance, when two or three thousand honest and 
hard-working people are gathered together, that 
they do not immediately proceed to poke their 
fingers through the pictures, mutilate the statues, 
smash the glass cases, root up and trample down 
the flower-beds, and tear up the benches of the 
galleries, museums, palaces, and theatres in which 
they are permitted gratuitously or by payment to 
disport themselves. I do not volunteer such 
conventional panegyrics, because 1 hold them to 
be perfectly uncalled for and grossly impertinent, 
and because 1 am bold enough to think that the 
working-classes know quite as well as the non- 
working-classes can do how to behave themselves 
in public and in private, and do, not^mfrequently, 
behave themselves a great deal better. 

Still was there something in the aspect of this 
vast Britannia throng calling for something more 
than trite and perfunctory commendation. It 
was a Saturday night, and the majority of the 
working people there must have had their. wages 
in their pockets, or — the next thing to it — in the 
pockets of the buxom wives who, as a praiseworthy 
rale, accompanied them. I did not see, nor indeed 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN* THE SHEETS. 217 

could any one else, unless provided with tlie 
double-million magnifiers recommended by Mr. 
Samuel Yv^eller, any disposition on the part of 
this dense throng in fustian and corduroy to rush 
out to the nearest beer-shops and gin-palaces to 
squander their ready money in intoxicating 
liquors, to return in a frantic state to batter and 
bruise their wives and families with pint pots, 
legs of tables, and other lethal weapons of a blunt 
nature ; and then, after pawning their saws and 
chisels, and running up scores on account of next 
week's wages, to assure Mr. Solly, and the editor 
of the "British Workman," and other friends of 
the enslaved and oppressed, that " the drink had 
done it all," and that the only remedy for this 
alarming state of things was to petition the Legis- 
lature for the immediate enactment of the Maine 
liquor-law, and the wholesale closing of public- 
houses on week-days in general, and from Satur- 
day night to Monday morning in particular. I 
opine that, among the working-classes — as among 
the middle classes, and the " upper middle 
classes " (wherever they may be), and the upper 
classes, including the most inefi'ably Brahminical, 
with the yelloYf est streaks of caste on their fore- 
heads — there is, has been, and ever will be, a 
certain per centage of human hogs who choose 
to wallow in their own or the nearest licensed 
victualler's stye^ and to go to the devil in their 
' 10 



218 BREAKFAST m BED ; OE, 

own way. Of the Hoxton hogs, the average per 
centage were doubtless getting howling, snivel- 
ling, or dumb drunk at the adjacent public- 
houses. It is certain that they were not at the 
Britannia to see the Ghost ; and it is equally cer- 
tain that, under even the slightest influence of 
alcohol, they would not have been allowed to 
pass the outer barriers of the theatre. 

The occupants of the " auditorium '^ were, as a 
rule, a great deal soberer than I have often seen, 
• after dinner, the occupants of stalls and the back 
seats of the dress-circle at West-End theatres ; but 
their sobriety was due to no teetotal code, to no 
compulsory Lane liquor-laws. There is an abun- 
dance of refreshment-counters attached to the 
Britannia Theatre. Beer between the acts is a 
recognised institution, and is extensively drunk 
on the premises. There is even a smoking-room, 
just as there is to be a fumoiT at the new Paris 
Opera House ; nor, I believe, are those whose 
purses will support the expense debarred from 
partaking of hot and cold brandy-and- water, or 
champagne, or Johannisberg, or Hippocras, or 
Imperial Tokay, if they like to order it, and to 
pay for it, and it happen to be in the stock of the 
Britannia cellars, 

Tliere was a great deal to be seen before the 
great attraction of the evening — ^the Ghost^-^-was 
manifest. There was the house itself to gaze at. 



♦ PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 219 

densely thronged, as I have said, but not iinconi- 
fortablj so. In boxes as in gallery, in stalls as 
in pit, every one had ample scope and verge to sit 
at ease, and, in the intervals of the pieces, and 
at the close of the entire entertainment, to circu- 
late and depart without let or hindrance. The 
^Womitoria," as Mr. Boucicault would call them, 
were numerous, and skilfully constructed; and 
it was quite wonderful to see, when the night's 
diversions had been brought to a close, in how 
short a period of time — a few moments only it 
seemed — the immense area, so lately black with 
humanity, was deserted. Then there were the 
decorations of the house to admire — decorations, 
fittings, and appointments all handsome, tasteful, 
and commodious, without being either prodigal 
or meretricious. 

The stage of the Britannia is really superb both 
for size and proportions : — the width of the pro- 
scenium surprising. There is a very artistically- 
executed drop-curtain ; and of the scenery, pro- 
perties and dresses, all that I saw was not only 
creditable, but of a degree of excellence which 
would by no means have suffered by comparison 
with the haughtiest theatres of the West. And 
why should it so have suffered, I should like to 
know? The Britannia audience know a good 
thing when they see it, quite as well as other 
people ; nay, can at times be curiously apprecia- 



220 BSEAJTFAST IK BED J OS5 

tive and nicely critical. "We doesn't expect 
grammar at tte Wic/' once cried out a gentle- 
man in the gallery, at the well-known home of 
transpontine melodrama Avhen an unusually ill- 
set scene was put upon the stage — '' we doesn't 
expect grammar; lut you onight'jme your flats P 

The Britannia audience are in advance of the 
VictorianSp and would certainly resent, not only 
badly-joined, but carelessly-painted " flats ;" nay, 
more than this, from the slight experience I have 
had of the establishment, I am inclined to think 
that grammatical accuracy is by no means a^drug 
in the market at Hoxton, and that very unmis- 
takable signs 'of disapprobation would be appa- 
rent were Priscian's head to be broken too fre- 
quently and in too outrageous a manner in the 
course of one evening. 

I frankly confess, that of the great spectacu- 
lar, non-natnral, preternatural, supernatural, and 
thoroughly Hoxtonian melodrama of " TheWidow 
and the Orphan ; or. Faith, Hope and Charity" — 
if, at this distance of time and place, I am able 
to quote the title aright— I am unable to give 
anything beyond a very confused and involved 
account. To tell the truth, I couldn't make any- 
thing of the piece. It w^as too much for me. 
The plot was too complicated, the action too 
rapid, the incidents were too grandiose for my in- 
tellectual capacity. 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 221 

I am destitute of tlie faculty of comprehensiye 
criticism. I cannot understand an aggregate. 
Give me a minute point, a subdivided section, 
and I can concentrate my attention on it and dis- 
course about it, tant Men que mal. But the task 
of comprehending '' The Widow and the Orphan" 
was ten times too Plerculean for me. I know 
that the widow was a very neat and dapper widow 
— as widows go — brimming over with moral sen- 
timents of the most nnobjectionable character ; 
in short, a pattern to all widows, past, present 
and to come. There were two orphans, also, I 
think. One was meek, mild, uncomplaining ; the 
other sprightly, vivacious, and facetious, and 
"keeping her pecker up" — to employ an expres- 
sion which would be intolerably vulgar, I am 
afraid, even at Hoxton (why even at Hoxton ? is 
there no slang in high places ?) — nnder the most 
adverse circumstances. I think the part of the 
sprightly and vivacious orphan was filled by Mrs. 
Lane, the manager's wife, and the lady to whom 
much of the admirable discipline, organization, 
and tasteful arrangement which have made the 
Britannia a, model to all London theatres is 
due. 

I am not certain, but this I opine, that the 
sprightly and vivacious orphan could be also, 
upon occasion, sentimental and pathetic, and was 
throughout graceful and ladylike. Then there 



222 



was a baronet in Hessian boots, and a wig and a 
cocked-hat, if my remembrance serves me, and 
who was, perhaps, one of the wickedest, cruellest, 
and most hypocritical old miscreants ever per- 
mitted to infest the neighborhood of Hoxton, or 
anywhere else. 

What showers of five-cent pieces and deaayed 
apples they would have cast on his congener on 
the Boulevard du Crime ! What a storm of pea- 
nuts would have assailed him at the Bowery? 
The less demonstrative Britannia audience were 
content to shudder at his enormities, without 
pelting him. To this most depraved and flagi- 
tious member of the aristocracy perjury was a 
pastime, and bearing false-witness a 'bagatelle. 
He lied himself black in the face habitually. 
His profligacy was equal to his perfidy. Who 
but he locked up one of the orphans on a per- 
fectly unsustainable charge, thereby laying him- 
self open to an action and heavy damages for 
false imprisonment, and then — the hardened old 
sinner ! — wanted to " square'' matters by marry- 
ing her ? It is needless to say that his proff*ered 
hand was disdainfully refused by the wronged 
and outraged orphan. 

It was this baronet who saw — but I am fore- 
stalling matters. This hoary-headed villain had 
a son — at least, he hadn't a son, for the young 
man turned out in the last act to be somebody 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 223 

else's — whom he was continually cursing, betray- 
ing, cheating, turning out of doors, and cutting 
off with a shilling ; adding, besides, insult to in- 
jury, by calling him abusive names, and threat- 
ening him with his walking-stick. There were 
two more villains in the piece : — one a returned 
convict in high boots and a hairy cap, who 
looked IsTorfolk Island all over, with a dash of 
Bermuda, a tincture of Swan Eiver, and a per- 
vading flavor of the ISTew Cut ; the other a des- 
perate ruffian in black whiskers, a red waistcoat, 
and leather gaiters, who, in the first insta>nce, wa^ 
ready for any crime, from pitch-and-toss up to 
manslaughter — ^nay, beyond that last-named of- 
fence, for he devoted himself to assassination as 
blithely as Saltabadil in '^ Le Eoi s' Amuse," and 
tuait a la campagne^ ou en mile. 

Ultimately, be it recorded, to the honor of hu- 
man nature and the confusion of the theorists 
who maintain that crime is incurable, this aban- 
doned scoundrel became softly and sentimentally 
virtuous — quite a pastoral character, in fact — 
and was instrumental in rescuing one of the or- 
phans who had been pitched down a well, recov- 
ering a stolen lease, and bringing the depraved 
baronet to justice. 

Then there was a comic groom, who afterwards 
became an agriculturist, and who elicited shouts 
of laughter both in his livery cockade and top- 



224 BEEAKFAST m BED 



boots, and in his smock-frock and wide-awake. 
I am glad to say that tie made my sides ache, 
too, in a most nnaccustomed manner, althongL. I 
did not in the least know what I was langhing 
at. There were two bailiffs, and, if I mistake 
not, some of the county police concerned in the 
later transactions of the evening. 

There was a honse on fire — a very carefully- 
managed conflagration, in the midst of which Mr. 
Hodges' fire-engine, or its twin brother, made its 
appearance on the stage; and I fancied that I 
could discern among the attendant supers the 
agile form of the Duke of Sutherland. If his 
Grace wasn't there, the Earl of Caithness must 
have been. Finally, there was a mysterious indi- 
vidual of ripe — almost overripe — age, with very 
thin legs, and a smock-frock very much patched, 
a pillicock hat, and a basket containing either 
rags, bones, or chickweed at his back. 

This ancient party was continually stumping 
about with a crooked staff, interfering with every- 
body's business, but with ultimately beneficent 
intentions. He was a violent democrat, and 
when the baronet called him an " old pauper," 
made that unfeeling and flagitious person the 
butt of some very stinging sarcasms against the 
vices and folly of the governing classes. In the 
end, it turned out that he wasn't a pauper, but a 
real gentleman of the highest respectability, only 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 225 

he had " something on his mind," owing to his 
not having behaved well to his deceased wife, or 
his deceased wife not iiaving behaved well to 
him : I couldn't exactly make out which, but 
either eventuality is feasible. All came right at 
last. The old gentleman flung by his basket of 
rags, bones, or chickweed, and appeared in irre- 
proachable coat, flapped waistcoat, and small- 
clothes. The good people were all made happy, 
and the bad people transported. Yice was tram- 
pled beneath the iron heel of the high-low of 
Virtue ; and Faith, Hope, and Charity, came, 
like the Hebrew children, unharmed from the 
fiery furnace, and were triumphant. 

To have witnessed such a spectacle could not 
perhaps have done anybody's aesthetic and elas- 
tic taste much good ; but I am an antediluvian 
sprat if it could have done anybody's morals any 
harm. 

Stop, there was a kind of ante-climax, an in- 
tercalary tableaux, the apotheosis of somebody — 
the widow, I think — ^in which, after the famous 
model represented at the Princess's in " Faust and 
Marguerite," under Mv. Charles Kean's manage- 
ment, an emancipated spirit was seen ascendins; 
to realms of bliss, encircled by flying Cupids 
and flying coryphees^ all brilliantly illumined by 
the electric light. This tableau, which, viewed 
spectacularly, was exceedingly effective, was 

10* 



226 BEEAKFAST IK BED ; OR5 

greeted, I need not say, witli the most vehement 
applause from the audience. 

But the Ghost ; the Ghost was the thing des- 
tined to make us all open our eyes in blank 
amazement, and to sear, as with a red-hot 
iron, the conscience of the guilty baronet. He 
had retired to his study with two pair of wax- 
candles, an oaken escritoire, and a couple of 
tables and high-backed chairs, to meditate and 
mature fresh deeds of villany. Conscience smote 
him ; but he defied her. Then Conscience came 
up again in the guise of a Ghost, and again and 
again. Ghost after Ghost ; and the baronet yelped 
with terror. Conscience had him on the hip. 
Conscience made his spinal marrow assume the 
consistency of vanilla ice. Conscience brought 
out the cold drops on his hitherto brazen and 
unblushing brow. 

I am not bound to register what my conscience 
said, or to speculate upon what other people's 
consciences said to them, on the occasion ; but I 
avow that, although I knew the whole thing to 
be a clever optical delusion, devised, or patented, 
or registered by Mr. Dircks, C.E., and Professor 
Pepper, I shook all over, and my feet felt gelid in 
my anklejacks. There was Death with his dart — 
Death in the guise of a grisly skeleton. I didn't 
mind him much, for his anatomical development 
did not appear to me to be quite accurate, and 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEISr THE SHEETS. 227 

he looked a little too much, like a King of Terrors 
on pasteboard. Still the suddenness of his appear- 
ance, and the more wonderful instantaneousness 
of his disparition, made my heart tumble abnor- 
mally on its axiso 

But when the Ghost of the widow came up, 
lurid and menacing, seemingly palpable and tan- 
gible, yet wholly unsubstantial— when she pointed 
to the baronet and reproached him with his sins, 
and cried, "Ha! ha!" — and when, like a flash 
of summer lightning, she disappeared — ^I too, 
knowing always this to be a clever optical delu- 
sion, shook more than ever in my shoes^ and felt 
unwonted moiBture on my forehead. 

This was the Ghost I saw at Hoxton. This is 
the Ghost, I presume, that all London has gone 
wild about since its first appearance at the Poly- 
technic — the Ghost that is now walking at the 
Adelphi, and that is speedily to harrow up the 
souls of the Parisians. 

As I finish my Breakfast in Bed this morning, 
the Hoxton Ghost rises up before me, vivid and 
sparkling as ever, and I laugh at the clumsy 
trickery of ^ the Pilules du Diable I saw last 
night at the Porte St. Martin. " The Devil is 
an ass," quoth rare Ben Jonson ; and surely the 
P. S. M. diablerie was of the most asinine descrip- 
tion. The Ghost, after all, is the thing. Vive le 
rcvenant ! But there is one thing which contin- 



228 



lies to puzzle me desperately. How on earth, or 
nnder the earth, or over the earth, will MM. 
Lambert Thiboust and Hostein contrive, with 
anything like that common reason which is said 
to be existent even in the roasting of eggs, to in- 
troduce the Polytechnico-Britannia Ghost into 
Le Secret de Miss Aurore f 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEI^ THE SHEETS. 229 



OS THE DISCOYEEY IN ONE'S 'WAIST- 
COAT-POCKET OF SOME BONES 
OF UNUSUAL CHAKACTEE. 

Bones, forsooth, and in one's waistcoat-pocket 
too ! "What next ? the outraged reader will pro- 
bably desire to know. But this is a plain, un- 
varnished statement ; and the fact is as I set it 
down. Bones of an unusual character were dis- 
covered^ while I was Breahfasting in Bed on the 
^d of July^ 1863, in a certain waistcoatpocTcet^ 
and the waistcoat to which that pocket belonged 
was mine. 

Granted that such an article of male habili- 
ment is not precisely the place where, under ordi- 
nary circumstances, you would look for osseous 
fragments. The study of comparative anatomy 
seldom leads a man so far as to induce him to 
convert his pockets into depositories for bones. 
Besides, I am neither Professor Owen nor a me- 
dical student. Tou can keep a skeleton in your 
closet ; many persons nurture a serpent in their 
bosoms ; and more than one member of my ac- 
quaintance habitually wears a bee in his bonnet; 



r 

230 BREAKFAST IK BED; OR, 

but, for all this, it certainly seems wanting in 
congruity to turn your vest into a Golgotha. 
Whence and why these organic remains in the 
locality above mentioned? 

It is nevertheless undeniable that men do carry 
very strange and surprising things about with 
them. " The Mysteries of Men's Pockets " would 
furnish materials for a book fraught with direful 
interest. There are secrets hidden in the calico- 
lined recesses of broadcloth and shrunken tweed 
that would make you shudder if revealed. Yon- 
der rosy-cheeked man, with the simple-minded 
and unsophisticated countenance, who seems so 
pleasurably intent on a portrait of the Princess 
Alexandra in a newsvender's window — what do 
you think his pockets contain? ISTothing less 
than two pairs of handcuffs, a revolver, a trunch- 
eon with a brass crown at the top, and a war- 
rant to take you up, my felonious friend. He is 
Inspector "Weasel of the Detective Force ; and, 
absorbed by the royal portrait as he appears to 
be, his actual eyes are fixed on William Sykes, 
Esquire, late of Bermuda, then of Portland, and 
now of Whitechapel, out of any trade or occupa- 
tion save burglary, who is lurking over the way, 
and upon whom he will, within the twinkling of 
a truncheon, incontinently pounce. And W. S., 
Esq., himself ? Who but the Inspector, to see 
William arrayed as a peaceable journeyman-car- 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN' THE SHEETS. 231 

penterj or innocuous bricklayer's laborer, or in- 
offensive railway-porter, would imagine that, 
lying perdu in William's pocket of velveteen or 
fustian, there were such unconsidered trifles as a 
jemmy or two and a couple of centrebits, a bunch 
of skeleton-keys, a crape-mask, a knuckle-duster, 
and three inches and a half of wax-candle — the 
entire apparatus of William's little housebreak- 
ing business, in fact ? 

Behold that down-looking individual, who in 
apparel reminds you equally of a charity school- 
master and a retired tradesman in a Dissenting 
neighborhood. • Ask him what he has got in his 
pocket. A tract ? a hymn-book ? JSTot a bit of it. 
A coil of new rope; and you will swing in it, 
by bloodthirsty friend, as sure as the down- 
looking gentleman's name is Calcraft, next Mon- 
day morning. If we changed the Yenue from 
pockets to parcels, revelations as astounding 
could be made. 

Is it possible ever to forget that horribly face- 
tious story of Mr. Greenacre, lightly tripping out 
of the omnibus with a bundle of something in a 
blue bag under his arm, and remarking, with an 
air of banter to the conductor as he handed him 
his fare, that he really thought he ought to have 
paid for two ? The simple cad did not comprehend 
his meaning then ; but the gist of Mr. Greenacre's 
joke was apparent when it afterwards came out 



232 BBEAKFAST IK BED ; OB, 

that the blue bag contained the head of Hannah 
Brown. 

It was on a smooth highway once, in mid- 
spring and in the pleasantest part of the pleasant 
connty of Kent, that, with Engenius and Orlando, 
I careered in an open fly. The sun shone ; the 
birds sang ; the corn waved. We had lunched 
well, and proposed to dine even better. "We 
laughed, and chanted carols of revelry. All at 
once came a rattling along the road, and a chaise- 
cart, drawn by a plump horse, passed us. There 
were two policemen in the cart, two merry mu- 
nicipals, who now giggled, and now guflfawed, as 
they retailed, perchance, the scandal of the sta- 
tion, or girded at the inspector. One smoked a 
short pipe ; the other, who held the reins, chew- 
ed the cud of sweet fancies in the shape of a 
flower. Why should not policemen enjoy them- 
selves as well as other people? There jogged 
between them, in the cart, a certain jar of stone- 
ware, with a piece of leather tied over the top ; 
and, striking up an impromptu acquaintance with 
the official men, as by the freemasonry of the 
road we were warranted in doing, we joked them 
on what the jar might contain, playfully suggest- 
ing pickles, beer, or Old Tom, and challenging 
them to open and allow us to partake of its con- 
tents. " I don't think you'd like it, master," the 
policeman who wasn't driving, remarked, re- 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEK THE SHEETS. 233 

moving the short pipe from his lips. '^ "What's 
in that jar ain't nice, I fancy. Ifs just the 
stoinaclioftlieoldgentlmnan as was pisoned at 
Maidstone^ and we^re talcin^ it to le hanalyzed.'^^ 
That day we laughed no more. 

The mention of this alarming occurrence does 
not, perhaps, tend to the elucidation of the ques- 
tion of domestic paleontology which forms the 
subject-matter of this Paper. You have my ad- 
mission that bones — strange bone s — were found 
in my waistcoat-pocket (a dress- waistcoat, too, 
moire antique)'^ but how came those bones, or 
any bones at all, there, where no bones should 
be ? In this wise, candor compels me to relate. 
I presume that a family-man — a person, in short, 
who is habitually under tlie disciplinary control 
and supervision of other persons who torment 
him for his good, and make his life miserable in 
order that he may be happier afterwards — need 
experience no feeling of humiliation in the 
knowledge that the wearing-apparel he has cast 
off is, as a rule, searched before he breakfasts the 
next morning. If he do feel humiliated, it 
doesn't much matter. He will be searched all 
the same. Tou think, when you have laid your 
watch, purse, pocket-book, pencil-case, latch-key, 
and so forth on your dressing-table at night, that 
you have made a clean sweep of your pockets. 
" Get all that nonsense out of your head," as 



234: BREAKFAST IN BED ; OR, 

C. J. Fox said to N'apoleon. The domestic 
inquisition will be at work ; tlie domestic search- 
warrant will be issued ; you are sure to have for- 
gotten something in your pockets, and that some- 
thing-is sure to be discovered before you rise 
again. A due consciousness of this inevitability 
has led some astute sages to select secret hiding- 
places in their garments calculated to elude the 
strictest search. To have secret drawers made in 
the heels of your boots, and in the event of their 
being discovered, to declare they are spur-boxes, 
may be, perhaps, going a little too far ; and 
occult pockets in the lining of the back of your 
coat, are apt, if you use them as receptacles for 
personal effects, to give you the appearance of 
being humpbacked; but the inside of an umbrella 
is not a bad place for the concealment of trifles 
you don't wish discovered — say, the smoking-cap 
you purchased at Mrs. Pelham Yillars' stall at 
the fancy fair in aid of the funds for the Repent- 
ant Hagamufl&ns' Turkish Baths Association. Let 
your umbrella be an ugly one, so that the search- 
ing officers of your household may not feel 
inclined to borrow it. 

An umbrella, however, is easily lost ; and the 
lining of your hat may be, after all, the very best 
hiding-place for things you are desirous of keep- 
ing perdu, such as your proofs of Eafaelle's 
Madonnas, your certificate as a member of the 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 235 

Anti-Tobacco Association, your temperance 
medal, and the private addresses of the widows 
and orphans in 'New Zealand and the Yalleys of 
Uganda, to whom you have (in the charity and 
philanthrophy of your heart) allocated small 
annual pensions. "Why not lock these articles 
up ? you may ask. Bah ! puerilitj^ ! overween- 
ing fatuity ! As if other people were not always 
in the possession of means for opening your 
drawers and strong-boxes ? 

"Women have all acquired, intuitively, an 
infallible " Open Sesame." It was Eve, wander- 
ing in Eden with nothing to do, save mischief, 
who first found the weasel asleep, and availed 
herself of the opportunity to shave off his eye- 
brows. O Mr. Joseph Charles Parkinson, author 
of " Under Government ;" O communicative 
writer of " The Master Key to Public Offices ;" 
O soul-harrowing editor of the " ITote-Book of a 
Private Detective " — ^you don't know what goes 
on under crinoline government, or what master 
keys to private offices our domestic detectives 
keep hanging to the prettiest of. chatelaines. 
You never imagine that dear, smiling Mrs. Can- 
dor was born Mademoiselle Fouch6 ; and that 
Mrs. Lambkin's first husband was Captain Tarde, 
from Scotland. 

It is better that we should remain in ignorance 
of the whole extent of espionage that is exercised 



236 BREAKFAST IN BED ; OS5 

over ns. If everybody knew what other people 
knew about them, this ^^orld would be as intoler- 
able as the tigers' den at the Zoological Gardens 
in hot weather. 

I have said enough, however, it is to be hoped, 
to set all the Mrs. Candors and Mrs. Lambkins, 
who have anything to learn in their profession, 
busy searching Mr. C.'s umbrella and the lining 
of Mr. L.'s hat. Pending their anticipated dis- 
coveries, I will revert to the charnel-house topic. 
It was fortunate for me, on the morning when 
those bones came out, that nothing of a more 
incriminatory nature had been found upon me. 
It is not the season for masquerades ; but I have 
known dreadful scenes to arise through the turn- 
ing up of a crumpled bit of pasteboard covered 
with black silk, with two eyeholes and a fringe 
of sham lace. A pair of white kid-gloves, too, 
when you have left home in dark ones, may lead 
to much that is disastrous. A theatrical pass- 
check, with " Magenta " or " Hippopotamus " 
printed on it, does not look well ; and there are 
numerous other things a man may bring home 
in his pocket without being aware of them — 
circulars from the Church Missionary Society ; 
invitations to dine with the Gas and Gaiter Club ; 
four sovereigns won at cards, when he left home 
with two half-crowns and a fourpenny bit; tooth- 
picks ; j)rogrammes of the entertS;inments at 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEK THE SHEETS. 237 

Cremorne ; cliampagne corks ; cribbage-pegs ; 
strange latch-keys ; and tlie like ; all of -which, 
unless he have a talent for diplomatic explana- 
tion, may bring him into dire trouble. 

There was nothing against me on this particu- 
lar morning save the Bones. To diplomatize I 
deemed unworthy, and at once made a clean 
breast of it. You, lecteiir dSbonnaire^ shall be a 
party to the confession^ I had been to dine at 
the annual festival of the Acclimatisation Society 
at St. James's Hall, Piccadilly ; I had partaken 
in moderation of grenouilles a la poiilette^ a fri- 
cassee of FROGS in white sauce, which the Society 
seem to be seeking to acclimatise in our kitchens 
and on our dinner-tables — ^for frogs can scarcely 
be said to be exotic to our marshes and ponds — 
and w^hich are, I assure you, very nice eating ; I 
had picked a number of frogs' bones clean, and 
I brought them home as a kind of spoil or 
trophy, to hang up, in lieu of the dried scalps of 
my foes, in the domestic wigwam. That is to 
say, I meant to keep them under a clockcase, 
where., completely desiccated, carefully perfumed, 
and tastefully gilt all over, I still preserve the 
shell of a crawfish which once decorated a vol an 
vent a la financiered and which I keep, not only 
by reason of its being a charming miniature 
model of a lobster, but because it serves as a 
memento of one of the friskiest fish-dinners at 



238 BREAKFAST m BED; OEj 

Blackwall at wMcli I ever had the honor of being 
an invited guest. 

So, the murder is out ; and it being difficult 
to associate any very flagrant degree of moral 
turpitude with the possession of the tibia and 
fibula of poor froggee, peace, for an instant dis- 
turbed by the unwonted appearance of the Bones, 
was soon restored, and I was permitted to expa- 
tiate on the peculiarities of a very strange but 
very succulent dinner. 

The Acclimatisation Society of Great Britain 
and Ireland, is composed of a number of ener- 
getic and public-spirited men, who do not stick 
at trifles. Approach thee like the rugged Rus- 
sian bear or the armed rhinoceros, and you won't 
frighten a member of the Acclimatisation Society. 
He will do his best to acclimatise the bear and 
the rhinoceros ; and if they are good to eat, he 
will devour them d la croqiie an set. 

Reader, I must deprecate any indignant feel- 
ings which may arise in your breast, if, in the 
course of the next page and a half of this Article, 
I make use of a good many words of dubious 
French origin. I shall be compelled to quote 
tb.e bill of fare ; and as Mr. Donald, of St. James's 
Hall, keeps a French chef^ of course it was but 
natural for that functionary to draw up his menu 
in culinary French. The Acclimatisation Society 
dinner was of a duplex or rather a triplex nature. 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEH THE SHEETS, 239 

It comprised, first, the elements of a first-rate 
French banquet; next, those of a substantial 
English repast ; and thirdly, a variety of abnor- 
mal dishes and wines of cosmopolitan extraction 
and exceptional character, specially introduced 
for the occasion by the Acclimatisation Society. 
Thus, we had clear turtle, and Msque smdpotage 
d la Bedford^ and then we were to have had 
" white soup of the Channel Islands ;" made of 
the conger eel — a creatu.re so despised that the 
starving Irish have refused to add flavor and 
nutriment to their potatoes by boiling them with 
a salted steak of the conger ; and yet it is ad- 
duced, as a curious illustration of national preju- 
dice, that while starving Paddy rejects the conger, 
large quantities of the fish are boiled down into 
stock, to be used in the making of turtle-soup in 
London. I hope there wasn't any conger eel in 
my iortue claire. 

I strive not to give way to prejudice as to what 
I eat or drink, and have swallowed in my time, 
not a few " exceptional " viands ; but I don't think 
I could manage the white soup of the Channel 
Islands. It happened after all that the conger- 
eel soup did not make its appearance on the din- 
ner-table. A jar of it had been sent from Jersey, 
but, owing to the heat of the weather, had turned 
bad en route^ and sojuq potage d la reine had been 
substituted, which looked quite as nasty as the 



240 BEEAKFAST EST BED; OB, 



^* white soup '' is said to be. I tried hard to eat 
it, but gave up tlie attempt at last in despair, 
mingled with disgust. 

I didn't presume to proclaim my aversion to 
the bilious-looking mess aloud ; for the majority 
of the company present were " swells '' of the 
very heaviest fashionable or scientific order ; but 
the facetious Mr. Bernal Osborne, behind whom 
I had the honor to sit, felt no such scruples. It 
happened that the Duke of ITewcastle, who had 
been announced to take the chair, couldn't come. 
He had been asked to tea I believe, by royalty, 
at Kew ; and at the fifty-ninth minute Mr. Her- 
man Merivale, 0. B., was elected to the presi- 
dency. But Mr. Osborne accounted for his 
grace's absence in quite another manner. He 
pointed out that the Duke had taken the chair at 
the Acclimatisation banquet in the previous year ; 
that he had been tempted to try the potage of 
conger eels ; that he hadn't quite recovered from 
the efi'ects thereof; and that he had stayed away 
from this year's dinner through a wholesome fear 
of being once more compelled to swallow a plate- 
ful of the abhorred white soup of the Channel 
Islands. The audience roared with laughter at 
this humorous hypothesis ; only the fact of the 
soup not being of conge-r eel at all, whicli after- 
wards oozed out, somewhat detracted from the 
force of Mr. Osborne's sarcasm. 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 241 

And yetj eels are savory things. Fried, they 
are delicious ; spatch-cocked, they are glorions ; 
and stewed— ah ! no more on that exciting topic. 
When the Old Serpent appears in the guise of a 
stewed eel, it is impossible to resist him. 
(^ Then, again, as a soup there was hoioilldbaisse. 
J!*Tow there are a great many wonld-be epicures 
wto profess to delight in this cnrious souche of 
fish, spice, and garlic, because Mr. Thackeray has 
written upon it one of the most beautiful lyrics 
extant in any language, j "When your young 
University man first goes to Paris,, he is sure to 
inquire after "the new street of the little fields," 
and his soul thirsts after a mess of 'bouillabaisse 
and the '^ Chambertin with yellow seal." For 
the Chambertin, p<^ vie va ^ but as regards the 
bouillabaisse^ I would rather take something " ex- 
ceptional" in the way of potage colimagon or 
tripes a la mode de Caen. It may stand high in 
the Provencale cuisine ; it may be the favorite 
fish-stew of the Bay of Biscay — imagine the ship- 
wrecked mariners : — 

*' There tliey lay- 
Ail that day 
(Devouring bouillahaisse) in the Bay of Biscay, oh !" 

but it is nevertheless horribly nauseous. The 
culinary sages of the Acclimatisation Society tell 
us that ^'it is made of various fishes, but its 

11 



243 BKEAKFAST IN BED; OK, ,^ 

indispensable ingredients are red mullet, toma- 
toes, red pepper, red bnrgundj, oil, and garlic. 
Soles, gurnets, dories, and whitings are admis- 
sible into this dish." Yes, and there is another 
item admissible : bnt on which I fancy the Ac- 
climatisation Society, were they aware of it, 
would scarcely care to dwell. 

At Marseilles, where 'bouilla'baisse is made in 
perfection, the cook always has at his side a 
caldron of hoilmg tallow — tallow, not oil, mind ! 
He plunges a long rolling-pin into this caldron, 
withdraws it, and holds it aloft till the tallow is 
congealed. Then he gives it another dip, and 
another and another, until the rolling-pin is sur- 
rounded by a sufScient thickness of solidified 
tallow. And then he plunges the greasy staff 
into the kettle of houillctbaisse and turns if round 
and round till all the tallow is melted from it, 
and has become incorporated with the delightful 
pot-^oicrri of '^ red mullet, tomatoes, red pepper, 
red burgundy, oil, and garlic." After this, go 
and eat your fill of bouillabaisse. 

Against fish-soups, however, I raise no voice. 
Turtle, terrapin, oyster, hisqiie^ are all exquisite. 
The Italians, again, have their zuppa marinana^ 
which is not (saving the presence of the A. S.) 
at all like louillahahse / and the Russians make 
a very appetising piscine pottage (when you are 
acclimatised to it) called hatwiiiia. The stock of 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 243 

this is composed of Ttvas^ or half-brewed barley- 
Leer and oil, and into this is put the fish known 
as the sterlet of the Yolga, or the sassina of the 
Gulf of Finland, together with bay-leaves, pepper, 
and lumps of ice. I will match hatwmia any day 
against louillabaisse. 

So mnch for soups. ITow for the fish proper. 
Salmon d la Duchesm de Sutherland^ turbot 
stuffed a la Hollandaise^ do not call for par- 
ticular remark. JBlanchaille^ I apprehend, is 
French for whitebait; and if that fish exist in 
France, or if whitebait be a real fish at all, and 
not an artful combination of batter, pepper, and 
currants thrown in to serve as eyes, I will bow 
to Mr. Donald's chef. " Caller salmon " was put 
forward as '' exceptional," the peculiarity of the 
dish being that the salmon has beeji boiled as 
soon as possible after being taken from the water, 
so that the fat has curded between the flanks. 
I hope the zeal of the A. S. won't lead them 
to the discovery that the adipose matter in salmon 
may be curded even more rapidly by boiling the 
fish alive. 

We have heard quite enough about crimped 
cod ; and after watching the evolutions of that 
noble, blue-black, armor-plated man-of-^var in 
the vivarinm at the Zoological Gardens, one 
almost feels inclined to recommend the practice 
of boiling lobsters alive to the notice of the 



244 BEEAKFAST IK BED ; OSj 

secretary of the Koyal Society for the Preventioti 
of Cruelty to Animals. If '' the cardinal of the 
seas/' as Jules Janin^ with amusingly blundering 
humor, called him, could only be born red, what 
an imm^ensity of agony he might save himself, to 
be sure I 

"Charr" was served fresh» It is usually 
served potted, and is a capital " pick up " if you 
are breakfasting in bed, and feel faint. It may 
vie as a restorative with dried cod-sounds. 
Caviar they gave us not ; yet to relish this 
delightful conserve of sturgeon I think the 
British public stand sadly in need of being ac- 
climatised. 

We see the neat little kegs of caviar in 
Morel's or Fortnum and Mason's windows ; but 
only enthusiastic epicures think of buying them. 
To acclimatise yourself to caviar, you should 
begin on a course of Dutch herrings washed 
down by a couple of tumblers (taken.fasting) of 
cod-liver oil. After that, empty a pot of black- 
currant jam into a salt-cellar, and cram the 
amalgamated contents into a sardine-box half 
full of fish. Stir well, and keep the box in a 
warm room for a fortnight; Then serve on 
bread-and-butter, and tell me how you like it. 
The mixture as before (with perhaps a little of 
Warren's blacking added) is very like caviar. In 
Mahomet's seventh heaven the honris always eat 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEE2^ THE SHEETS. 245 

a pound and a half of it for breakfast on Tues- 
days and Fridays. 

" Lucioperca " is the pike-percli found through- 
out ISTorthern Europe. " Although excellent for 
the purposes of the table," writes the Apicius of 
the A. S.5 its voracity is such that its introduc- 
tion into this country is not recommended, ex- 
cept in ponds especially devoted to its propaga- 
tion." In these special ponds, I suppose, the lu- 
cioperca would eat one another, until the sole 
survivor of the tontine assumed the dimensions 
of a whale. 

There were no sea-slugs this year, and there 
was no bird's-nest soup : but there v/as plenty of 
sturgeon, which reminds you of a tough veal- 
cutlet sent for his misdemeanors on board ship 
and returned with a fishy flavor. 1 missed kan- 
garoo-steamer also, and gambo-soup : nor, so far 
as I could ascertain, was there any parrot-pie on 
the table. The entrees^ however, were very rich 
and varied. The su^remes de volaille cocks- 
combed or truffled, the oroustades of quails, the 
cutlets and curries and IcromesTcis and sweet- 
breads, I dismiss at once. They belong to Mr. 
Donald, not to the Society. In the " exceptional " 
domain we had pepper-pot, that wondrous West- 
Indian dish, that salmagundi of fowl, beef, and 
mutton, peppered up to the maintruck, and 
sauced with the cassareep or inspissated juice of 



246 BKEAEFAST IN BED ; OE, 

the manioc root ; the whole kept simmering and 
seething in a huge jar or pipkin. I consumed 
vast quantities of pepper-pot. Dear old mess ! 
I felt to the manner born of it; it was my pot au 
feu. 

Shall an Irishman not love his praties, a 
Scotchman his oatmeal-porridge ? I was weaned 
on pepper-pot and mangoes. The taste of the 
cassareep brought j&oating before * my mind 
memories of the dead and gone past ; preserved 
ginger and guava jelly, yams and plantains, 
tamarinds and arrowroot, banyans and pig-galls, 
and grinning servants with black faces and yel- 
low kerchiefs twisted round their woolly pates. 
And yet I was never in the West Indies in my 
life. ^ 

Some " Pallas sand-grouse " proved very tooth- 
some. Tliese are the birds whose recent visits 
to this country have given the chatty-correspon- 
dents of " TheField" so capital an opportunity for 
displaying their acumen, and whose dusky selves 
are among the chief attractions of those charming 
Sunday afternoons when the British aristocracy 
are pleased to disport themselves at the Zoo. I 
didn't eat any of the poultry introduced with the 
fantastic title of poulets a V emancipation des 
negres / bnt I heard them very well spoken of. 
'^ The peculiarity of this fowl," I quote Apicius, 
or J. L.J Esq., '' is, that the skin and periosteum 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 24:7 

are quite black, but the flesh is perfectly white." 
Mr. Tegetmeier, of the Philoperisteron Society, 
says that it is the coq^ negre of Tammerick, and 
must not be confounded with the small silky 
bantam known as the coq a duvet. 

But I am in a liurry to get to the grosses ^pieces. 
Haunch of venison, saddle of mutton — we knov/ 
all about these ; but what think you of agneau 
chinois rati entier^ farci aim jyistaohes^ servi a%i 
pilaff et couscoussoio ! — a Chinese lamb roasted 
v/hole, stuffed with pistachio-nuts and served 
with COUSCOUSSOU5 which last is a preparation of 
wheat used among the Moors, Algerines, and 
other natives of the ITorth- African littoral, . in 
place of rice. I have heard that the Moorish 
young ladies are fattened for the matrimonial 
market by a diet ad libitum of this strengthening 
compound. 

The couscoussou is made into balls and stuffed 
into the mouth of the marriageable young lady, 
till she grows as tired of balls as a belle who has 
been through three seasons of quadrilles and 
polkas without getting a single offer. If the 
damsel won't eat any more couscoussou, they 
administer the bastinado till she feels hungry 
again. They do such odd things in Barbary ! 

"Well, how about the education of goose-livers 
with a view to pate de foie gras ? Hov*^ about 
stuffing turkeys? and don't we send our sons 



248 BREAKFAST IN BED ; OR, 

to a crammer wlieii we are anxious that tliey 
should obtain a Goyernment clerkship or a direct 
commission ? 

"In the lamb roasted whole/' says Apicius 
(or J. L., Esq.), "we have one of the earliest 
dishes on record in the history of cookery. 
Stuffed with pistachio-nnts and served with 
pilaff, it at the same time illustrates the anti- 
quity of the art, and gives an example of the 
food upon which millions of our fellow-creatures 
are sustained. The lamb proves the excellent 
flavor of the Ong-Ti breed of Chinese sheep, the 
introduction of which is one of the special objects 
of this society. 

Thus far Apicius; but I take the liberty of 
stating that I should prefer Ong-Ti mutton to 
Ong-Ti lamb. The Chinese lamb was decidedly 
flabby, and, as is usually the case when an animal 
is cooked entire, the fire had burnt up one part 
and left the others nearly raw. The carver did 
not love or fear mo sufficiently to give me a 
liberal allowance of pistachio, and the pilaff stood 
in need of a little ghee or fluid butter (rancid, if 
you please) being poured over it. However, it 
was a noble experiment, and shows that the 
society are disposed to adopt no half-measures. 

"Fawn of fallow deer," "ribs of beef between 
buffalo and Kerry cow " — these were pieces de 
resistance whose presence only I am enabled to 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 249 

record. " Their names," says J. L. Apicius, Esq., 
pithily, "explain their iiuention." There was a 
red-deer ham, and one of bear — very Succulent ; 
but why couldn't the society have made an 
arrangement with an enterprising hair-dresser, 
and caused " another fine bear" to be slaughtered, 
in order that the company might taste a bear- 
steak and a tender sirloin? I ate bear once at 
a Russian dinner-party (where it was introduced, 
I admit, as a curiosity, and not as an ordinary 
dish), and a half-a-dozen mouthfuls made me sick 
for a fortnight afterwards. The meat Vv^as tough, 
glutinous, and had, besides, a dreadful, half- 
aromatic, half-putrescent flavor, as though it had 
first been rubbed with asafoetida and then hung 
up for a month in Mr. Eimmel's shop. 

Bison tongues, Chinese yam, Bayonne ham, I 
dismiss ; but was disappointed at not seeing on the 
table any of the famous donkey-fiesh sausages of 
Bologna. A roast monkey, -too (most delicious 
eating when stuff'ed with chestnuts), was a desi- 
deratum ; and I asked in vain for rat. Snails, 
too, were absent; but en reva/nche I took my fill 
of frogs. 

When you were a little boy at school, you 
probably ate a good many frogs. Our practice 
was, when we had caught them, to pinch our 
nostrils with the fingers of one hand, and holding 
the dapper little froggee lightly with the other^ 
11* 



250 BREAKFAST m BED; OB, 

to allow him to jump down our throats. There 
was a tradition among ns that to swallow live 
frogs (for the process could not be called eating) 
made a boy strong and valorous, and almost iin- 
sentient to the cuts of the cane. As we advanced 
in years we took a distaste for frogs. We were 
patriots. We grew to hate frogs because we 
heard that the French liked them and that they 
formed a principal item in the diet of that viva- 
cious and ingenious people. The truth is, how- 
ever, that frogs are regarded in France as a most 
luxurious delicacy, and are correspondingly ex- 
pensive. The Marche St. Honore is the most 
usual place for their vendition ; and as only the 
hind-legs are eaten by the Parisians, and the 
23rice is seldom under fifteen francs a dozen, a 
dish of frogs is only seen at the table of a million- 
aire. Of their tenderness, succulence, and deli- 
cacy of flavor, there can be no question. 

The greowiiilles d la pouletie at the Acclima- 
tisation dinner were superb. The white sauce 
left nothing to be desired. I ate as much frog as 
ever I could get ; and, as related above, I brought 
the bones home in my waistcoat-pocket as a 
trophy of victory over a stupid and irratignal pre- 
judice. We eat the dirty pig, the dirtier duck, 
and yet we turn up our noses at the clean-living, 
and clean-feeding frog. Had not the Acclima- 
tisation Society a hundred other claims to public 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 251 

support,' our gratitude would be due to them for 
thus bravely teaching Englishmen to eat frogs. 

This Homeric, this Apician, this Vitellian, this 
Gargantuan banquet — the like of which I never 
saw before, but fondly hope to see again — was 
washed down by copious streams of Sherry, Hock, 
Meursault (very good), Eed Burgundy, Cham- 
pagne, and Moselle. 

Among exceptional wines we had a whole host 
of Greek ones. Santorin we quaffed^ and Thera, 
and St. Elie^ and Corinth, and Mount Hym^ettus, 
Yi Santo, Cyprus, and Lacrima Cristi; while 
from the Magyar vineyards came Muscat, Badas- 
conyer, Dioszeger Bakatar, Hock, Euszte, Szama- 
rodny, Adlerberger Ofner, and Tokay. Among 
the Greeks, my humble verdict is recorded in 
favor of St. Elie. The Hungarian are stout 
wanes, of a swashbuckling flavor; but a man 
needs a strong head to drink pottle deep of them. 

Such w^as the dinner to which I came a little 
late, and whence I brought away the Bones. 
Tarde venientibus, ossa. I laughed as well as I 
could for eating and drinking strange things all 
the evening. 

The room was very hot, and crammed besides 
with nearly all the notabilities of the day ; but 
the feast was so rich and so rare that we should 
have cheerfully partaken of it even in a Turkish 
bath. There were but few drawbacks to the en- 
tertainmont. 



252 BREAKFAST IN BED ; OK, 

The cliairmaii, it is true, talked Colonial Office 
and "Quarterly Eeyiew " in a torrent of fluent 
platitudes^ till I ran my eye down the bill of fare 
to see if red tape au naturel wasn't included in 
the removes ; but we were not there for the pur- 
pose of listening to speechifying. 

The "exceptional" dishes had deprived the 
waiters of the few wits conferred on them by na- 
ture ; and one or two of their body appeared to 
have been partaking surreptitiously of white soup 
of the Channel Islands until the decomposed con- 
ger eel had got into their heads. The ostrich 
eggs, again, were not forthcoming, to the bitter 
disappointment of Mr. Bernal Osborne; and 
there was no horse. Almost everything else, 
however, in the way of edible or potable rarity 
was to be found on the table ; and I believe that, 
had those latest lions of London, the Maori chiefs, 
been among the guests, the Council of the So- 
ciety would have revolved, at least, the expe- 
diency of serving up a cold boiled missionary, 
with a stewed baby and a baked young woman 
to follow, as a delicate attention to the distin- 
guished Kew Zealanders. 

They were not there, however; nor, unfortu 
nately, was another gentleman, whose absence 
was most sincerely to be deplored, not only for 
our sakes, but for his own. 

The joint secretaries to the Acclimatisation 
Society are Messrs. Frank Buckland, the dis 



PHILOSOrHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 253 

tingiiished naturalist and promoter of piscicul- 
ture, and James Lowe, who in a gastronomi- 
cal tournament would clieerfully give the ghost 
of Brillat-Sayarin twenty, and with his arms 
tied behind his back, defeat Dr. Kitchener, 
Prince Cambaceres, and Mr. Hayward. At the 
last moment Mr. Lowe was attacked by sud- 
den illness, and his attendance at the banquet 
was compulsorily foregone. It was a heavy 
blow for everybody, including Mr. Lowe. But 
such is life. 



254r BEEAKFAST m BED; OK^ 



OIT A YOUIs^G LADY IN A BALCOKT. 

. A DiSTiNGinsHED English writer has been occu- 
pied, I am informed, for some years in the com- 
position of a book with the seductive title of the 
" Footsteps of Luther." Mv acquaintance with 
contemporary literature is of so limited a nature, 
and I know so little of what is going on in the 
great world, that it is quite possible that the book 
I speak of may have been completed, published, 
and reviewed these six months past, and that its 
gifted author has been long since crowned with 
laurel or overwhelmed with abuse : the terms be- 
ing, to many intents and purposes, synonymous. 
If this be indeed the case, I am sure I beg the 
author's pardon very humbly. I know that he 
went to Germany to write the book, and took a 
camera and a quantity of collodion with him to 
photograph the footprints of the Great Reformer 
as he wandered ; but here my positive informa- 
tion ceases. 

My only object in alluding to the " Footsteps 
of Luther" was to point out that, good as that 
title was, it seemed to me that I knew of a better- 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 255 

In Protestant England, of course, every tittle of 
information having even tlie remotest connection 
witli mightj^ Doctor Martin is interesting, and, 
after a kind, sacred ; but at Geneva, it may be, 
the Sire Jean Chauvin, otherwise Calvin, is first 
favorite in the Reforming heart ; and if we go 
southwards, and across certain mountains, we 
shall find many millions of religionists who wick- 
edly maintain that, if Martin Luther could have 
been made, by persuasion of the secular arm, to 
dance upon nothing, such aerial footsteps would 
have been the gratefullest to the Church at large. 
But here is a book whose title, were it faithfully 
and skilfully borne out by its matter, would 
be sure to please all, and could offend none. 
"What do you think of " The Footsteps in Italy of 
"William Shakespeare ?" Can you imagine a 
tome more delightful? Once, when I was young 
and hale, and my heart fat as butter with con- 
ceit, I thought of sitting down to write such a 
book myself. It was years and years ago — be- 
fore I had been set face to face with my own 
ignorance, and, glancing in the glass of expe- 
rience, had found how very long my ears were. 
I remember that I propounded my design in the 
boxes of the Porte St. Martin Theatre in Paris 
(where tliey were playing Alexandre Dumas's 
"Oreslie'^) to a great English man of letters. 
The illustrious personage saw my drift at once, 



256 BEEAKFAST IK BED; OR, 

and deigned to say to me, " I envy yon yonr sub- 
ject." 11 Va hien dit^ be who never envied mor- 
tal man, but ever strove to help and to encourage 
the weakest and the dullest, and to give frank 
praise to his few compeers. Well, I never grap- 
pled with the subject that he professed to envy 
me. I did not forget, I simply neglected it. I 
have been haunted by this abandoned one many 
a time. Here it is still, an embryo crying for 
maturity ; a blossom that, were I worthy, would 
have given place, ere now, to ripe and luscious 
fruit. However, it is now too late ; so, to pre- 
serve my bantling from atrophy (here is a fine 
confusion of metaphors at your service !) I desert 
it on a doorstep. With averted face, and tearful 
eye, and remorseful heart, I place it in the turn- 
ing-cradle. May some good Sister of Charity re- 
ceive, to cherish it ; and may it find better for- 
tune in the Foundling Hospital for Wit than in 
my brains ! 

Only last night (I remember now, as I Break- 
fast for the last time in Bed), sitting in the stalls 
of the Princess's Theatre, and witnessing the tra- 
gedy of " Eomeo and Juliet," the image of my 
abortive book came across me, and I longed to 
find some man or woman of wit and parts who 
would turn my vision into reality. For I should 
be loth to see the task undertaken by one of the 
common herd of scribblers. Naturally, now that 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 257 

the notion is common property, every botcher has 
a right to try his 'prentice hand npon it. Hircius 
probably will swear that he thought ten years ago 
of following Shakespeare up and down Italy ; and 
Spungius may endeavor to raise money on ac- 
count from the booksellers on the security of the 
idea. But to do the thing thoroughly, a host of 
rare qualities would be needed. II. d'Alembert 
once dotted down a few of the acquirements which, 
in his opinion (and D'Alembert knew a thing or 
two), were requisite to a writer wh > aspired to be 
a Biblical critic. The dottings-down filled half 
a dozen closely-printed pages ; the which I re- 
spectfully commend (together with Yoltaire's 
''Defense de mon Oncle," and Bayle's second 
"Life of David") to the attention of the Right 
Reverend Father in Mumbo Jumbo, Dr. Colenso. 
He will find that there were some strong men 
before Agamemnon, and some hard nuts, which 
stronger men than he essayed to crack before the 
demolition of the authenticity of the Pentateuch 
became as fashionable an amusement as rubbing 
one's nose against Zadkiel's crystal ball, or going 
to see Blondin on the high rope. 

He who would write the " Footsteps in Italy 
of William Shakespeare" (I thought in my, 
stall, should be, first, a copious and profound 
Shakesperian scholar, and an acute Shake- 
sperian critic. He should know the plays by 



258 BREAKFAST IN BED ; OE, 

heart ; have the poems on the tip of his tongue ; 
and harbor some tangible hypothesis on the son- 
nets. He should be well np in his Hazlitt, his 
Schlegel, his Maginis, his Coleridge, his Djce, his 
Staunton, and his Halliwell. All that Malone 
and Steevens have written should be familiar to 
him. Then he shonld be a linguist, who had 
read through Guicciardini without being daunted 
at the War of Pisa, and mastered all the Foreign 
State-Papers in our Record Office (unhappy Turn- 
bull !) and all the Eelations of the Venetian Am- 
bassadors lately disentombed by M. Armand 
Baschet from the Convent of the Frari. Further- 
more, he shonld be an artist, practised in the va- 
rious styles of Turner and Calcott, of Stanfield 
and Holland. In addition, he should be a pol- 
ished, patient, appreciative, and observant travel- 
ler ; a Rogers, a Lear, a Eustace, a Kinglake, a 
Canon Wordsworth. Finall}^, he should bring to 
his Italian journeyings the mordant humor of 
Heinrich Heine, the metaphysical sentiment of 
George Sand, the voluptuous w^ord-painting of 
Byron, the minute pencilling of the President de 
Brosses. Finially, he should be a gentleman. 
Armed cap-d-ine with all these qualities, and 
with plenty of money, time, industry, and health, 
and sufficient reticence to burn his MS., sheet by 
sheet, if it proved faulty, he might in the end pro- 
duce, I think, such a work as would infinitely 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 269 

delight tliis generation, and one that posterity 
would not willingly let die. 

I don't think it militates in the slightest degree 
against the value of my ideal book to be told 
that Shakespeare never was in Italy. He had 
been everywhere, as he was everything, in the 
spirit. The people who cudgel their brains as to 
his medical knowledge and his legal knowledge^ — 
as to whether he was ever a scrivener or an apo- 
thecary, a soldier or a sailor, a butcher or a 
horse-couper — are, to my mind, donkeys, and 
nothing more. He was a clairvoyant. His 
Elsinore is in the very Denmark ; his Dunsinane 
in Scotland ; his forests near Athens ; his Cliff 
in Kent ; his Belmont in Venetia (I have seen 
Portia's house ; it is on the Banks of the Brenta, 
and is now inhabited by an enriched jyrima 
donna); his " park and palace in ISTavarre " in 
the Basque country ; not necessarily because ho 
ever actually or corporeally journeyed to those 
places, but because the Almighty had gifted him 
with the power of seeing things in his soul, and 
of describing them in matchless music. And in 
the main, though all his absolute peregrina- 
tions may have extended no further than between 
London and Stratford, and the suburbs of the 
metropolis, he is a more trustworthy traveller 
than Mandeville or Purchas, Hackluyt or Marco 
Polo. 



260 BREAKFAST IN BED ; OR, 

In tlie wliole Sliakesperian catalogue there is 
no play more thoroughly Italian than " Komeo 
and Juliet." Enthusiasm for the mighty master 
may be the parent of such an opinion, you may 
surmise ; but just take a through ticket by the 
Yictor Emmanuel Railway, and leave the train 
at the Porta ITuova, Verona, and trot on the 
next day to Mantua, and you will come to be of 
my mind. Gorgeous as are Mr. John Gilbert's 
illustrations to the Routledge edition, his superb 
designs, when he touches the Italian dramas, 
seem to me mea^e and shrivelled. It is in the 
text that you must look for the genuine local 
coloring, the choice Italian. There you will feel 
the real Italian sunshine, the balmy nights, the 
bath of moonlight, the lounging, lazy lives of the 
men and women, the saunterings and sighings 
and whisperings, chequered every now and then 
by fierce outbreaks of passion — ^by the sharp 
scream, the torrent of passionate invective, the 
quick curse, the sudden stab. Upon my word, 
not six weeks since at Verona I saw Sampson 
biting his thumb at Abram^ and Gregory back- 
ing him up ; and then there was a rixe^ and the 
Capnlet women rushed out of their houses and 
slapped the Montague children violently; and 
Benvolio strove in vain to quell the turmoil, and 
old Capulet in his gown (he carried on the pro- 
fession of a money-changer, and had been dis- 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEK THE SHEETS. 261 

turbed from his siesta) came slmffling out of his 
^hop, with Lady Capitlet^ in a dingy bed-gown, 
clinging to him ; and then the venerable Mon- 
tague (who had subsided into the peaceful pursuit 
of vending saffron-tinted sausages) issued from his 
back parlor, accompanied by his lady, and gave 
Capulet a piece of his mind ; and then the women 
scolded, and the men stormed, and the dogs 
barked, and everybody bit his or her thumb, or 
snapped their fingers at everybody else ; and 
people who had seemingly nothing on earth to 
do with the fray, flung open third-floor case- 
ments, and joined with shrill verbiage in it ; and 
there was, on the whole, a devil of a commotion. 
It did not concern me ; but I felt so excited, that 
had I had a weapon on my thigh, I am afraid I 
should have drawn, and had a lunge at some- 
body. As it was, I found myself in fierce parley 
with an old woman who sold lemonade under an 
archway ; and where it would have ended I know 
not, had not, in the nick of time, Prince Escalus 
(represented for the nonce by an Austrian cor- 
poral's guard with fixed bayonets) come up, and 
abused the combatants all round in Teutonic 
Italian. Some one— I believe Oregoinj — was 
marched off to the guard-house ; and I made my 
peace with the old lady who sold lemonade ; and 
Cablet went back to his siesta^ and Montague to 
his sausages. But until I left Verona by the 



262 



Porta Yescova, I was in a perpetual day-dreain 
about " Romeo and Juliet." Wherever tlie road 
bifurcated, I expected to meet the fiery Tybalt^ 
Ms sword drawn, raging up one thoroughfare, in 
search of the pacific JBeiivoUs (an Italian quaker 
he) who was quietly trotting down another. 
What a man of men he was, that T'yhalt ! 
Shakespeare knew well enough that he would be 
possible nowhere but in Italy ; so he put him in 
Yerona. The heat of the climate made him mad. 
His sword turned red-hot in its scabbard, and 
burnt through the leather, and scorched his 
thigh. Then he went at it, hammer and tongs : 

" JSTon scliirar, non parar, non ritirarsi 
Voglion costor, ne qui destrezza ha parte ; 
Non danno i colpi, or fiiiti, or pieni, or scarsi ; 
Toglie r ira e '1 furor 1' uso dell' arte. 
Odi le spade orribilmeute urtarsi 
A mezzo il ferro ! II pie d' orma non parte : 
Sempre e il pie fermo, e la man sempre in moto ; 
Ne scende taglio in van, ne punto a voto." * 

Here is the real Tybalt for you, when he has 
gotten an antagonist worthy of his blood-lustful 

* "They wish neither to avoid the combat, to parry -the 
blows, nor to fly. Skill hath no part in the conflict ; their 
thrusts are no make-believes : now straightforward, now oblique. 
Rage and hatred rob them of the resources of art. Here the 
horrible shock of their swords clashing together \ Their feet 
are firm and motionless ; their hands always on the move. 
Kot a blow is given in vain ; not a thrust is lost." 



PHILOSOPHY EETWi:i:iSr THE SHEETS. 263 

steel. He is a good swordsman ; but in Lis craze 
for killing, lie despises carte and tierce and reason 
demonstrative. Here is Tybalt foaming at the 
month, blind with fnry, hacking, hewing, slash- 
ing, stabbing away. Surely Shakespeare mnst 
have read these burning lines of the old Italian 
poet, and conjured up the fiery Tybalt from the 
ringing rhyme. That " Odi le spade orribilmente 
urtavsi a mezzo il ferro P^ was amply sufiicient 
for the clairvoyant. And indeed I am, in this 
surmise, not VN^innowing the wind ; for there is 
every likelihood that William Shakespeare did 
read the lines I have transcribed. They are 
quoted by Montaigne, and Montaigne's Essays 
were, we know, from an undoubted autograph, 
among the favorite reading of our poet. 

I ncA^er heard a burst of laughter from a caffe 
that afternoon in Yerona without peeping in to 
see the gallant Mercutio swinging his legs on a 
marble table, and bantering the love-lorn Romeo 
sighing over his sugar-and-water. I went to see 
the so-called tomb of the ill-starred lovers ; but 
that apocryphal monument did not help my ' 
illusion. The streets were enough for me. What 
does it matter, I asked myself, whence the master 
obtained his plot, or who the lovers really were ; 
whether, as Mr. Douce essayed to prove, the 
original tale comes from a Greek author, one 
Xenophon Ephesin^; or whether the events 



264: BREAKFAST IN BED ; OK, 

recorded took place, not at Verona/ but at 
Sienna^ Roiiwo being ^^a yonng man of good 
familyj named Mariotti Mignaletti/' and Juliet 
a certain Donna Gianozza ? All tliese are trifles, 
"Whether the romance was of Luigi da Porto's 
making, or of Bandello's, or of Boisteau's, thence 
translated by Arthur Brooke, frets me little. It 
is enough that Shakespeare, from a lovely legend, 
was permitted to make an immortal drama : that 
he has laid the scene in Italy ; and that the play 
is Italian to the very core. 

In what part of the continent if you please, 
save Italy, would that garden-scene have been 
feasible ? Italy is the country where, after the 
scorching day, comes a cool but temperate night. 
Italy is the land where young people sit up all 
night to make love, and where, too, they do 
tumble into love with one another at first sight. 
In decorous England, Juliet^ s sudden passion for 
Romeo might have been considered improper. 
In Italy, nothing could be more natural. It is 
where the sun is so warm that the corn ripens so 
quickly. And the impromptu masquerade ; and 
the pretty fib told by Juliet that she was going 
out to confession, when she is bent on being mar- 
ried! In England, a young lady would have 
told her mamma that she was going to Mudie's 
or to Regent Street to purchase two yards and a 
half of maize-colored ribbon. And then the 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 265 

clianges of scene, the frequent dialogues that take 
place ''in a street/' ''another street," "a public 
place!" Italy is the country above all others 
where people meet in streets and public places to 
talk together by the hour, to chat, to .gossip, to 
flirt, and to quarrel ; for those streets and places, 
you see, are lined with cool and shady arcades, 
along whose pavements you can saunter, against 
whose pillars you can lean, free from dust, or 
heat, or jostling crowds. 

But farewell, fair Verona, and Heaven deliver 
thee speedily from the Austrian corporal's guard 
and the dominion of the double-headed eagle 
generally! I must not forget that I am in 
Oxford Street, and in the stalls of an English 
playhouse, and that my business to-night is 
only, by implication, with " the footsteps in Italy 
of William Shakespeare," but more directly with 
Mademoiselle Stella Colas, from the Imperial 
French Theatre at St. Petersburg, who under- 
takes the part of Juliet^ and, thorough French- 
woman as she is, plays it in English. 

The pretty creature ! Mademoiselle Stelle Colas 
is by this time gone back to St. Petersburg, and 
the praise or blame I am presumptuous enough 
to mete out to her will probably never reach her 
ears, unless indeed the editor of the " Nevsky 
Magazine" chooses to transfer this article (to 
which he is very welcome) to the next number 

12 



286 EEEAKFAST IK BSD; OB, 

of his publication. E'er/ perliaps, were this 
*' Breakfast in Bed" broiiglit under the notice 
of tlie charming Stella, would she be much the 
wiser for it ; for I have heard spiteful people on 
this side of the water hint that her acquaintance 
with the English vernacular was of the most 
limited nature, and that she mastered the 
speeches set down for Capiilefs hapless daughter 
mainly in the poll-parrot fashion. Tis no dis- 
grace for a French tragedienne to have done so. 
Have we not all been told that the illustrious 
Eachel herself was not gifted with the faculty 
of understanding much of the purport of the 
lines she spoke, all native as the language was 
to her; that, word by word, and syllable by 
syllable, the couplets had to be laboriously 
drummed into her, until she was in a position to 
debiter la tirade^ to roll forth her lava stream of 
declamation ; and that those wonderful move- 
ments and bits of by-play— few in number, cer- 
tainly, and somewhat monotonous — ^which used 
to excite our amazement and admiration were ail 
taught her, in the purest mechanical manner, by 
her instructor, Monsieur Sanson? Eachel did 
not care much as to what author she recited 
from ; Eacine, Comeille, Moliere, Ducis, of 
Legouve, were all the same to her. She had 
Something iii her— wonderful, Heaven-giveii 
genius; but it lay deep, dormant; it wanted 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 267 

smelting ; the gold needed to be separated from 
the ore ; and it vv^as for Monsieur Sanson to 
use the divining rod and the digger's cradle. 
The English actor— perhaps Mr. John Ryder ?— 
whose pleasant ta^k it was to '^ coach " Stella 
Colas had not, perhaps, so difficult a labor. This 
fascinating youug woman was evidently highly 
appreciative amd imaginative, and probably 
seized the scope and meaning of Juliefs charac- 
ter long ere she understood the half of Shake- 
speare's words. I question whether, after allj 
she had anything beyond a vaguely general com- 
prehension of them. 

The pretty creature! I say again. Was 
there ever such a darling Juliet f Lest I 
should be accused of impertinent personality 
in thus publicly expressing my admiration for 
a pretty girl, let it be understood that my com- 
pliments are addressed not to her, but to the 
series of cartes de visite published towards ' the 
close of her engagement. Her photographs 
were well-nigh as pretty as herself. Such 
childish innocence ; such langorous love of 
the handsome Montague with the green-silk 
legs ; such winning fondness for the nurse who 
scolded but idolized her ; such affectionate reve- 
rence for her harsh papa and mamma ; sucii 
trust and confidence in Friar Laiorence ^ 
such sv/eet and simple v7omanly daintinesseSj 



268 BEEAKFAST IN BED ; OR, 

were probably never developed by tlie camera 
before. 

And here let me be permitted a slight digres- 
sion. To lis English people of the nineteeth 
centnry, the behavior of Capulet and his wife 
to their daughter, can scarcely fail to appear 
barbarous and unnatural. We have match-mak- 
ing mammas in our midst, no doubt, who lead 
their daughters a terrible life on vexed questions 
of matrimonial alliance ; and ill-natured papas, 
who threaten to cut their girls off with a shilling 
if they don't immediately discard the penniless 
captain for the rich cotton spinner. But tfie 
Capulets in modern life are, I hope, extinct ; or, 
if they are to be found lurking in odd nooks and 
corners, they must be set down as monstrosities. 
Take yourself back to medieval Italy, however, 
and JulieCs papa and mamma become the most 
natural people in the world. The old Italian 
novels and chronicles are full of Lord and Lady 
Gajoulets. If we glance at a recent, to say little 
of the present, state of French society, we shall 
find parental harshness carried to an extent 
scarcely less hideous. Do you remember Oin- 
evra^ the heroine of Honore de Balzac's most 
pathetic romance? Ginevra is only Juliet. 
Her vindictive Corsican parents are only Capu- 
lets ; the man she persists in marrying is simply 
a Montague, " Marry the County Pmis^ or get 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEK THE BHEETS. 269 

thee to a niinrieiyo^' '^ Many tlie GmJbnty 
Paris^ or be turned out of doors." " Do as you 
are biddeiij or be locked up in the coal-cellar on 
bread-and-Y/ater.^' "- Choose your bridal dress, 
or never see your papa and mamma's face 
again," These were the agreeable refrains of 
the family ditty. 

I am afraid that^ if v/e turned away from Italy 
and directed pur glance towards England, we 
should find enough of parental cruelty ^.nd to 
spare, not only in Shakespeare's time, but for a 
hundred and fifty years afterwards. In one of 
Gibber's comedies, a young married lady^ say 
BeTintlii% asks anotlier youthful matron, say 
Clarissa (who detests her husband), why she did 
not marry the man of her choice. ^^My mother 
would have whipped me," answers Clarissa, sim- 
ply. And Materfamilias W0uld have whipped 
her, too, soundly. The story of Dr, Johnson 
and the young ladies in Lincolnshire might be 
quoted in confirmation ; likewise old Aubrey's 
garrulous aecount of things as they were in his 
youth (close upon Shakespeare's time), when 
mothers corrected their daughters with their 
fans — the handle at least half a yard long — and 
^' in the days of their be&om discipline used to 
slash their daughters when they vfere perfect 
women." In the great case of the Eeverend Mr. 
CroftoUj a PuritaB diviaCj who was^ prosecuted 



270 BEEAKFAST m BED; OR, 

for Larbaronsly beating his servant-girl, he was 
asked why he had not used a wand or cane for 
the pnrpose of chastisement; whereupon his 
reverence replied that " his mother, once beating 
her maid with a vfand, did chance to strike out 
her eye^ which caused him thenceforth to mislike 
such usage." A pretty state of thhigs ; but our 
great-great-grandmothers were nevertheless sub- 
ject to it. Hear Aubrey again: "The gentry 
and citizens had little learning of any kind, and 
their way of breeding up their children was suit" 
able to the rest. They were as severe to their 
children as their schoolmasters, and their school- 
masters as masters of the House of Connection. 
The child perfectly loathed the sight of his 
parents, as the slave his torture. Gentlemen of 
thirty and forty years old were to stand like 
mutes and fools bareheaded before their 
parents; and the daughters (grown women), 
were to stand at the cupboard-side during 
the whole time of the proud mother's visit, 
unless (as the fashion was) leave was desired, 
forsooth, that a cushion should be given them 
to kneel upon, brought by the serving-man, 
after they had done sufficient penance in 
standing." Ah, the grand old days of author- 
ity and discipline ! There is a " court Cup- 
board " mentioned in " Eomeo and Juliet," 
and it was doubtless by this " cupboard-side " 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN" THE SHEETS 271 

that poor Juliet stood when it pleased her "proud 
mother " to visit her. 

"With this yoii may compare Lady Jane Grey's 
account of her early tribulations, and her nip- 
pings and pinchings in the Suffolk family ; but 
to my mind the clearest gloss on the Capulets^ 
usage of their daughter is to be found in the 
undeniably old ballad of "Willikins and his 
Dinah/' revived in our time with such brilliant 
success as a comic song by Mr. Eobson: 

" As Dinah was a walkin' in the garden one day, 
She met with her father, who to her did say, 

* Right tooral, right tooral,' etc. 

* Go ! Dinah, go dress yourself in gorgeous array, 
For I've met with a young man so pleasant and gay ; 
I've met with a young man of ten thousand a year. 
And he says that he'll make you his love and his dear. 
* Right tooral, right tooral,' " etc. 

You know how Dinah pleads her youth, and 
that " to marry that moment she^s not much in- 
clined ;" and how her " stern parient " flies into 
a passion, and threatens to leave his large fortune 
to the nearest of kin ; whereupon Dinah commits 
suicide, and Willikinsy^?(? de se. You may object 
that all this is but an after parody of Shakes- 
peare's tragedy, " cup of cold pison " included ; 
but I hold the '^ London Liquor Merchant," from 
which Mr. Robson's comic ditty was derived, to 
b4 at least as old as ^^ Barbara Alien " and the 



272 BREAKFAST IN BED: OK, 

" Bailiff ^s Daughter of Islingtoiij'' and if not 
contemporary with, anterior to, Shakespeare's 
age. Both tbe ballad and the play are indig- 
nant protests against paternal harshness; and 
there may be some truth in the tradition that 
Shakespeare was incited by Lords Essex and 
Southampton to bend his wonderful genius to 
the embodiment of such a protest on the stage ; 
to call down public indignation on a Draconic 
domestic code imported from abroad, and which, 
if we ai'c to believe the memoirs of Silvio Pellico, 
existed in Italian households so late as the begin- 
ning of the present century. 

And I have kept poor dear Stella Colas wait- 
ing all this time ! Well, with fifteen • hundred 
admirers, at the very least, watching her every 
movement, and applauding her to the very echo, 
she can well afford to spare my oblique gaze. 
Did I like the French Jidiet ? Did I prefer her 
to Fanny Kemble, to Ellen Tree, Helen Faucit ? 
Well, she was very, very pretty. She dressed in 
excellent taste. She had one of the most sensi- 
ble, polished, and gentlemanlike liomeos I ever 
desired to see- — Mr. Walter Montgomery — who, 
on his part, had a wonderful Apothecary in Mr. 
Belmore. She had an admirable Fnar Law- 
rence in Mr. Henry Marston, one of the best 
actors on the English stage. And what else ? 
Well, if the truth must out, I should have liked 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. 273 

to witness Mademoiselle Stella Colas' imperson- 
ation of Juliet with a ball of cotton securely 
stuiFed into each of my ears. Her pantomime 
was marvellous. She was full of grace, agility, 
intelligence, fascination ; but I do not like to 
hear the words of Shakespeare murdered ; and 
that she did so murder them — murdering even 
while she smiled — is a certainty. In this I may 
be hypercritical. Foreign tragedians, male and 
female, on the English boards have become the 
fashion. "We have had a High-Dutch Hamlet. 
We have now had a French Juliet, I live in hopes 
of seeing a Spanish Oplielia^ and a Cochin-Chi- 
nese Lady Macbeth. 

Of Mademoiselle Stella Colas' astounding in- 
tensity of passionate grief, the critics have dis- 
coursed until they have become well-nigh as 
hoarse as the pretty French actress at the end of 
her screeds of woe. Said a very clever and a 
very witty lady, who sat by my side in the stalls, 
to me, 

^' Of what does that last agony of anguish re- 
mind you ?" 

" Of Niobe, of Rachel, of Sappho, of the Py- 
thoness, of Madge Wildfire," I answered, heed- 
lessly. 

" ITot at all," pursued my interlocutor. '^ Yous 
n^y etes pas! Does not that appalling lament 
remind you^ somehow^ of a cat upon the tiles T^ 



274 BREAKFAST IN BSD ; OR, 

The ladj was not an Englisliwoman ; and 
abroad, as you may know, it is the custom to 
call things by their names. 

But she was a pretty creature. Oh ! she was 
fair. I hope she filled Mr. George Yining's 
treasury to overflowing. I hope she will marry 
a Russian Grand-Duke at the very least ; and 
when next Mr. Walter Montgomery plays Romeo^ 
I trust he will be enabled to find another Juliet 
as comely and a^ graceful as Stella Colas. But 
I very much doubt it. 

Lo I I hear the clatter of the crockery-ware on 
the stairs ; and, for the last time, Crazy Jane 
brings me up my '' Breakfast in Bed." For 
twelvemonths I have partaken of my morning 
meal on my back, and feebly pliilosophized be- 
twe-en the sheets. But the year is out. I have 
grown to acknowledge that my lie-a-bed habits 
are highly deleterious, not to say immoral ; and 
for the future, I am sternly resolved to rise at 
seven o'clock, and have my tea and toast in a 
decent breakfast-parlor punctually at eiglit. 
Good-bye, ladies and gentlemen ; may your 
shadows and digestions never be less. Good- 
bye, Hircius and Spungius, engaging '' Compan- 
ions of my Solitude," inexhaustible themes for 
" Essays written in the intervals of Business.'^ 
Farewell, my best beloved ; we may meet agaia^ 



PHILOSOPHY BETWEEIT THE SHEETS. 275 

shortly. I take my leave with feelings of affec- 
tion towards all the world — ^feelings that o'er- 
brim my eyes and swell my bosom. What are 
riches, honors, dignities? Give m,e HEAKT! 
Bless everybody ! 



THE END. 



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